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WP-Optimize completely rejects false allegations of ‘gaming’ page speed results

by | Aug 30, 2022 | Plugin News

On Friday 26 August, Gilo Varghese, founder of Flying Proxy, a CDN, tweeted the following allegation about WP Optimize: https://twitter.com/GijoVarghese_/status/1563097754322501632 . We were not contacted directly but learned of it a few days later when we were asked by a WordPress news site to comment.

Gijo Varghese tweet

In short, the allegation is that WP-Optimize are deliberately deceiving its users by appearing to use page speed tools like GTMetrix to be faster than sites actually are, and are doing this secretly for the purpose of making WP-Optimize look better.

Varghese then proceeded to respond to users who responded to his Tweet to ‘plug’ his company, Flying Press, which is a competitor to WP-Optimize, with a competing plugin product:

Gijo Varghese - 'Shameless Plug'

The tweet was widely circulated, and resulted in a WP Tavern article yesterday on the allegations.  This was a UK public holiday, when many of our team were away and we didn’t have time to fully investigate the allegations. We were given a few hours before publication to respond, but at that time our main WP Optimize developer was already, in his time zone, asleep.

The team at UpdraftPlus (owners of WP-Optimize) investigated today and found the allegations to be completely false.  The truth is actually the reverse – it is the allegations which have been presented deceptively, missing out obvious and key facts.

The most fundamental is that feature used to construct the claim clearly says in the user interface “…if you would like to exclude scripts from page speed tests”.  The allegation by contrast implies this is hidden only in the code.

WP Optimize Plugin

Secondly, the advanced setting used in the allegation is a valid feature, useful to find out whether the essential JS/CSS files are actually slowing down the web page or not.  i.e. It has a proper use. This feature is by default, turned ‘off’ and only enabled by advanced users who know what they’re doing.  

Joe Miles, a manager at UpdraftPlus said “the claim is the plugin is being deceptive, but it’s actually an explained setting in advanced settings which a site owner would have to decide to use, which have been used to falsely claim that WP-Optimize is manipulating things.  The setting is a valid tool for testing.  So UpdraftPlus will not be removing it and we’ve asked for the false accusations to be deleted.”

Peter Wilkinson from Divi Engine who developed Divi Nitro, (a speed performance plugin which is not affiliated with WP-Optimize, but actually a competitor), investigated the claims and said “Initially I was shocked at the news and as a competitor, thought it was bad practice to be deceiving customers.”

“Upon further investigation, I found out that it was actually far from the truth. In reality (from my research) WP-Optimize do not “cheat” pagespeed tools when you install or minify your Javascript. 

“To “cheat” the tools, you need to manually add the JS files you want to asynchronous load to a setting that clearly has the label “Use this if you have a completely independent script or would like to exclude scripts from page speed tests (PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix…)”

Wilkinson made this very clear video to show how the untrue allegations have been unfairly presented in a way that misleads people:


“It just goes to show that you should not believe everything you read or hear. Test everything to make sure it is the truth.”  Wilkinson added.

“In my view, Gijo Varghese has used deception to promote Flying Pages and Flying Press.”

Adam Lowe, President of PeakPerformanceDigital.com who was initially quoted in WP-Tavern as asking UpdraftPlus “how are we supposed to continue trusting your company with my clients’ backups when you use these deceptive and fraudulent practices?” replied today in support of WP-Optimize.  He said:

Adam Lowe tweet

Meanwhile, Andrew Palmer of WP Plugins Plus, tweeted that he believed the original claims to be false:

Andrew Palmer tweet

Summary: Gijo achieved the result that he did by using a clearly labelled expert feature with explained possible use cases to do something else. He then presented this as the normal but dishonestly hidden result of using WP-Optimize. This should never have been made a news story. We do not encourage anyone to try to “game” PageSpeed scores, and Gijo’s allegations that this is our secret intention that people would do so is unworthy, and we hope he will do the honourable thing and retract it. If any other users are puzzled by anything else in WP-Optimize, we hope that instead of stirring outrage on Twitter, they will ask us about it in a support channel.

Minify code investigation in WP-Optimize

by | Aug 29, 2022 | WP Optimize

Next-day interim update: Now that our main developer with responsibility for this area of the code has been able to get out of bed (he is in a different time-zone) and conducted an initial analysis, things look quite different. The controversy is entirely mistaken, and would not have existed if we had been consulted in any of our available support channels (e.g. the open-to-everyone forum on wordpress.org) and allowed sufficient time to investigate before publication (we first became aware at the end of a Monday that was a UK public holiday). In fact, on the analysis that we have now had time to perform, the controversy originated with a direct competitor who, after misconfiguring the plugin (what he configured is not a default option, and could only be achieved by either overlooking or misunderstanding the described use-cases and entering contrary details into the settings field), subsequently used the resulting Twitter storm to promote his own competing products. Fuller details will be forthcoming once our investigations are complete.

* * *

In the last hour I have been made aware of some code in WP-Optimize’s “minify” module whose actual purpose (whether legitimate, or whether just to “cheat” page-speed-measurement tools) is questionable. We are investigating this, and a statement has been posted here whilst we carry that investigation out: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/code-under-investigate-in-wp-optimize/.

For clarity, we:

  • definitely do not approve of such “cheats”
  • will remove the code immediately after our investigation if it is found to be such
  • and as explained at that link, inherited that particular section of code from another open-source minification project under an open-source licence, and did not at the time notice its suspect characteristics which we have now become aware of.

As stated at the above link, there is no question of the code being dangerous, vulnerable or useful for hackers – the question is whether it does anything useful to optimise your website for real-world visitors, or is just there to get better scores on speed measurement tools. Our products’ integrity and customers’ trust is essential for us, and we will take appropriate action as soon as our investigation is completed.

David Anderson (on behalf of WP-Optimize / Team Updraft)