- A performance enthusiast and developer named Gijo Varghese has found some evidence of WP-Optimize cheating in benchmarks.
- The code in WP-Optimize disables JavaScript files when it detects a benchmarking tool; which results in better performance than the real user experience.
- WP-Optimize lead developer David Anderson has stated that the code in question does not belong to them and will be removed if it is not serving any legitimate purpose.
WP-Optimize, one of the most popular performance enhancement plugins for WordPress websites has been accused of cheating on benchmarks. Gijo Varghese, a performance enthusiast developer has found some evidence that shows WP-Optimize disables JavaScripts when it is being tested with benchmarking tools.
Does not reflect real user experience
According to Gijo Varghese’s claim, WP-Optimize does not load JavaScript files when it detects the user-agent/browser is Lighthouse, GTmetrix, Headless Chrome, or Pingdom. Running a page without JavaScript indeed improves the performance, resulting in higher scores on those benchmarking tools for websites. That causes a difference between the real user experience and the benchmarks since real users get the JavaScript files loaded.
🚨 How "WP Optimize" is cheating PageSpeed and other testing tools 👇
When a site is loaded, the JavaScript files are loaded only when the user-agent/browser is not Lighthouse/GTmetrix/Headless Chrome/Pingdom.
No JS = high scores. But for real users, these JS files are loaded! pic.twitter.com/uuOiAOgvoo
— Gijo Varghese (@GijoVarghese_) August 26, 2022
“The code in question is not ours”
The lead developer of WP-Optimize, David Anderson, has brought WPTavern an interesting explanation. According to Anderson, the codes that disable JS files when it detects benchmarking tools go back to 2.5 years ago, when the company was thinking about combining forces with the Fast Velocity Minify plugin.
In the decision period, WP-Optimize developers have forked and adapted Fast Velocity Minify. In the end, they could not agree. This is when Anderson thinks the code is mixed in WP-Optimize codes. Those codes were not touched for 2.5 years and developers were not aware of those lines.
David Anderson added that if the JavaScript optimization expert can’t find any purpose for the code, they will certainly remove it. David Anderson, developer of WP-Optimize said;
« The code in question is not dangerous, a virus, an infection, useful to hackers, or anything of that kind. The allegation is that its only purpose in existing is effectively to cheat on speed tests. Such code, if so, does not belong in WP Optimize and we will remove it with a new release. Our products’ integrity, and our customers’ trust, are essential for us (and deliberately putting things in open source code that compromises that is, frankly, a stupid thing to do). »