What is the purpose of use.typekit.net when it appears during a Google Speed Insight?

When conducting a PageSpeed Insights audit on your website, you might come across a domain called use.typekit.net. This domain is associated with Adobe Fonts, formerly known as Typekit. It is used for serving web fonts to your website.

Here's the purpose of use.typekit.net and why it appears during a Google Speed Insight audit:

1. Web Fonts: Web fonts are custom fonts that can be displayed on your website, regardless of whether users have the font installed on their device or not. They play a crucial role in typography and can enhance the design and aesthetics of your site. Typekit is a popular service for accessing a wide range of fonts to use on your website.

2. External Resource: When you use Adobe Fonts, the fonts you select are not stored on your website's server. Instead, they are hosted and served from Adobe's servers. This means that when a user visits your website, their browser has to fetch the font files from the use.typekit.net domain, resulting in an external resource request.

3. Speed Insight Audit: When you run a speed test on your website using Google's PageSpeed Insights, it evaluates your site's performance and provides suggestions for improvement. The appearance of use.typekit.net in the audit indicates that the loading of web fonts from the use.typekit.net domain might be impacting your site's speed and performance.

To optimize your website's speed and reduce the impact of use.typekit.net:

• Consider applying the following practices:
• Minimize Font Variations: Using multiple font variations increases the number of web font requests and can slow down your site. Keep your font choices limited to reduce the impact on performance.
• Load Fonts Asynchronously: By using async or defer attributes in the script tags that load the fonts, you can prevent the blocking of other resources on your page, allowing them to load faster.
• Use Font Display: The font-display property can be applied to CSS rules responsible for loading web fonts. It allows you to control how quickly the text appears on your page, even if the web font is still loading in the background.
• Leverage Caching: Web fonts can be cached by the user's browser, reducing the need for repeated requests to the use.typekit.net domain. Ensure that appropriate caching headers are set to allow the browser to store the fonts locally.

Overall, while use.typekit.net is a necessary external resource for serving web fonts, it's essential to optimize its impact on your site's performance to ensure a faster and smoother experience for your visitors.

Additional Questions:

1. What is Adobe Fonts and how does it work?
2. How do web fonts impact website performance?
3. Are there alternatives to Typekit for hosting web fonts?