GZIP for SEO?

[cgl102770]

I had a 3rd party review my client's sites SEO and this was a recommendation:

"You should compress your HTML to reduce your page size and page loading times - this will help your site retain visitors and increase page views. Consider using GZIP to compress your HTML. If you were using compression, you could be compressing your HTML size by 54% to further reduce page loading time. If you were using compression, you could be compressing your HTML size to 1.97 kb."

Is this allowed by bluehost? Is it considered a good practice? I trust my source though wasn't sure if it was something bluehost allowed...thank you for any suggestions!

[farcaster]

I couldn't find anything in the Bluehost Help Desk about mod_gzip, but I did remember an article that Matt Heaton, the founder of Bluehost wrote in a blog about the subject. Here's the link, and I'll leave it up to you for your interpretation, although it does not mention SEO. It deals with shared hosting services and mod_gzip and mod_deflate.

http://www.mattheaton.com/?p=228

[cgl102770]

Thank you for the link! I'm not sure if he's saying that bluehost automatically uses mod_deflate for all of their sites?

[cade]

Yes, mod_deflate is enabled for all sites hosted at Bluehost when available CPU time exists. In practical terms, mod_deflate is running most of the time, but may be disabled on the fly based on to the second (microsecond, actually) available CPU calculations.

[cgl102770]

Thank you for the reply...

[Bob Barr]

Yes, mod_deflate is enabled for all sites hosted at Bluehost when available CPU time exists. In practical terms, mod_deflate is running most of the time, but may be disabled on the fly based on to the second (microsecond, actually) available CPU calculations.
<random speculation>
Would it be reasonable to consider deflating (or gzipping) files offline and uploading them in compressed form so that they would always be delivered in the smallest size? Or is there some reason that couldn't be done?
</random speculation>