Compression
Reducing transferred bytes through an encoding negotiated between client and server.
What Compression does not show
It changes bandwidth and latency, not the semantic amount of content.
Where Compression comes up on this site
- Text-to-HTML ratio: when a page is mostly codeFetch the page with a plain client that accepts compression, decompress it, and count the bytes; then strip script , style , noscript , template and svg elements, remove the remaining tags, collapse whitespace and count again.
- Our audit labelled one page and measured another for weeksThe small deltas are compression and dynamic content.
- What answer engines receive from local business sites: mostly not textCompression cannot fix a page that has nothing to say; it needs words, not fewer bytes.
Definitions that name Compression
Related terms in HTTP, edge and rendering
The delivery layer between an origin and a client: proxies, caches, redirects, status codes and the headers that decide what a crawler actually received.
Origin server · Reverse proxy · CDN · Edge node · WAF · Bot score · TLS handshake · DNS resolution · DNS timeout · Connection timeout · Read timeout · Redirect chain · Redirect loop · 301 redirect · 302 redirect · 307 redirect · 308 redirect · 304 response · 404 response · 410 response · 429 response · 500 response · 502 response · 503 response · 504 response · HEAD request · GET request · Content type · MIME sniffing · Content encoding · Brotli · ETag · Last-Modified · If-None-Match · Cache hit · Cache miss · Cache key · Vary header · Stale response · Stale-while-revalidate · Edge redirect · Origin bypass · Response parity · Header parity · hreflang · canonical URL · HSTS · HSTS preload list · Content-Security-Policy · CSP nonce · edge cache · cache split · cache-buster · Cache-Control · Age header · render-blocking resource · payload text share · lazy loading · 404 and 410 status codes
Questions about Compression
What is Compression?
Reducing transferred bytes through an encoding negotiated between client and server.
What does Compression not show or guarantee?
It changes bandwidth and latency, not the semantic amount of content.
Which area of the glossary does Compression belong to?
HTTP, edge and rendering: The delivery layer between an origin and a client: proxies, caches, redirects, status codes and the headers that decide what a crawler actually received.
← Content encoding · Brotli →
See it in the full glossary · 731 terms across 19 areas.