Compression: Why BearAudit Reports Gzip and Brotli
BearAudit shows whether your pages are compressed. Learn why gzip and Brotli matter for speed and SEO and how to enable them on your server.
BearAudit checks the Content-Encoding of each response. We report info (not error or warning): whether the page is compressed with Brotli, Gzip, Deflate, or not at all. It's informational—but compression is an easy win for speed.
Why compression matters
- Faster loads — Compressed HTML/CSS/JS is smaller over the network. Better LCP and TTFB, which can help rankings and Core Web Vitals.
- Bandwidth — Less data transferred. Good for users and servers.
- No downside for text — HTML and text-based assets compress very well. Enable it on your server or CDN.
What BearAudit shows
- Brotli (br) — Excellent compression. We note it as such.
- Gzip — Very common and effective. We note good compression.
- Deflate — Less common; we report it.
- None — Response not compressed. We suggest enabling gzip or Brotli.
This is an info-level check. We don't fail the page for missing compression, but we surface it so you can improve performance. Many hosts and CDNs enable gzip by default; Brotli is often opt-in or available on modern stacks.
How to enable
- Check your host/CDN — Many offer "enable gzip" or "compression" in the control panel.
- Server config — Nginx, Apache, and others support gzip (and often Brotli via a module). Enable for text/html and related MIME types.
- Re-crawl — After enabling, run BearAudit again; the info message will reflect the new encoding.
For a short definition, see What is compression (Gzip and Brotli)? in our glossary.