We tested WP Rocket with video ads in our last case study. But the results were not that great. In many polls, this cache plugin gave excellent results and is the favorite of many WordPress users.
We tested another site with a similar configuration but no video ads to check out the influence of this plugin on core web vitals and performance metrics.
In this review and case study, we will check best WordPress cache plugin speed with only Adsense ads.
The small site has only 38 posts.
Test Scenario
This site had 23 active plugins. They included Ad Inserter Pro, AMP, kk Star Ratings, Redirection, Google Site Kit, Yoast and many others.
It was on the shared hosting plan of Dreamhost.
We used the GP Premium theme.
Adsense Ads displayed using the concerned plugin. There were 3 display ads.
Not many scripts were loading.
The main difference was that it did not include video ad code and no related ads from that network. Tests conducted in the Incognito mode of Chrome browser.
The WP Rocket settings were also similar to the previous case-study. We didn’t enable the minification feature of CSS and JS.
Is Rocket CDN (aff) good enough to improve your performance? Check the results.
WP Rocket – Performance Test with GTMetrix
WP Rocket – PageSpeed Insights Test
WP Rocket – WebPageTest
Conclusion
As we see in all the above results, the score is imposing with the WP Rocket cache plugin. We can conclusively say that third-party scripts spoil the user experience and speed metrics with default options.
The TTFB (time to first byte) times were higher as this site was on the shared hosting plan of DreamHost. WP Rocket settings need to be changed to include the compression of font files.
Adsense Ads are still creating lot of JS resources. It has some impact on performance, since JS optimization was not enabled in WP Rocket.
If you need to get better optimization, you need to tweak the WP Rocket settings to reduce the impact of the JS code scripts.
It proves that WP Rocket is the best cache plugin in the industry with minimal settings.