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Drive more leads with technical SEO
Why PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals matter
A fast website is far more than a convenience — it’s a core ranking factor. Google evaluates loading speed and interactivity using the Core Web Vitals. These metrics show how user-friendly your site really is:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How quickly does the main content become visible?
First Input Delay (FID): How responsive is the page when users interact?
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Does the layout stay stable or shift during loading?
A poor PageSpeed score can reduce visibility, increase bounce rates, and lower conversions — and reCAPTCHA often plays a bigger role in this than most expect.
To understand why a form impacts load time at all, it helps to take a quick look at how a website is built:
• HTML defines the structure — text, headings, forms.
• CSS defines appearance — colors, spacing, typography.
• JavaScript adds interactivity — sliders, animations, and security features like Google reCAPTCHA.
And JavaScript is often the performance bottleneck. When scripts like reCAPTCHA run immediately on page load, they block other processes. This increases load times and worsens your Core Web Vitals — especially LCP and FID.
What is reCAPTCHA — and why can it slow down your PageSpeed?
Almost every website with a contact or newsletter form uses Google reCAPTCHA today to prevent spam and automated submissions. We all know the message “Please confirm that you’re not a robot” — it’s essential for online security.
But the very thing that makes reCAPTCHA so effective at blocking spam can also become a problem for your PageSpeed.
Here’s why: When the page loads, the form immediately triggers a large JavaScript file from Google’s servers. This file is often loaded on the very first page view — long before a user even clicks into a form field.
This creates several issues:
⏳ Longer load times: The script blocks other resources and delays page rendering.
⚙️ Worse Core Web Vitals: Especially First Input Delay (FID) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) suffer because the reCAPTCHA script consumes processing power.
📉 Lower PageSpeed score: In Google PageSpeed Insights, this often leads to poorer ratings in interactivity and overall performance.
In short: The reCAPTCHA script is important for security, but not for performance. That’s why it’s worth controlling when and how it loads — using techniques like lazy loading, asynchronous loading, or defer. This keeps spam protection active without hurting your load times.
Here’s the key point: You don’t need to load the JavaScript for reCAPTCHA until someone actually interacts with the form — for example, by clicking into a field. To save this time, our developer implemented a solution that prevents the reCAPTCHA script from loading on the initial page view. It only loads once a user clicks into an input field.
We’ll dive a bit into the code, but don’t worry — we’ll provide the snippet so you can apply the same improvement to your own reCAPTCHA forms. If you’re more interested in the why behind the process, feel free to skip the code and focus on the explanations.
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Step 1: Disabling the current reCAPTCHA form code
The first step was telling the website not to load the reCAPTCHA code the way it normally would. So when someone visits the site, the reCAPTCHA script no longer loads by default. Our developer added a function that removes this code:
add_action( ‘wp_print_scripts’, function () {
wp_dequeue_script( ‘google-recaptcha’ );
wp_dequeue_script( ‘wpcf7-recaptcha’ );
wp_dequeue_style( ‘wpcf7-recaptcha’ );
});
With this, the part responsible for loading reCAPTCHA is disabled. You can verify this using your browser’s Network tool. Just open any page, right-click → “Inspect,” then go to the Network tab.
For reference, we used the WEVENTURE contact page as an example.
As you can see, the right side shows everything that is being loaded — JavaScript files, fonts, etc. You don’t need to understand the entire table. Just pay attention to the very last line, “js.js.”
Step 2: Implementing the new code
Of course, we still need the form to work when someone fills out a contact request or subscribes to our newsletter. So we created a new JavaScript file. This file loads only when a user clicks into a form field.
Here’s how we call the new script recaptcha.js:
function cf7_defer_recaptcha() {
wp_enqueue_script(‘cf7recap’, get_template_directory_uri() . ‘/recaptcha.js’, array(‘jquery’), ‘1.0’);
}
add_action(‘get_footer’, ‘cf7_defer_recaptcha’);
Great! Almost done.
This code ensures that the reCAPTCHA form loads properly when needed. We didn’t show our actual reCAPTCHA key here for security reasons — instead, you’ll see “Put your own key here,” which is where you would insert your key if you use this code yourself.
var captchaLoaded = false;
$(document).ready(function() {
// Load reCAPTCHA script when a CF7 form field is focused
$(‘.wpcf7-form input’).on(‘focus’, function() {
// If script already loaded once, stop here
if (captchaLoaded) {
return;
}
// Variable initialization
console.log(‘reCAPTCHA script loading.’);
var head = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0];
var recaptchaScript = document.createElement(‘script’);
var cf7script = document.createElement(‘script’);
// Add your own reCAPTCHA key here
var recaptchaKey = ‘PUT YOUR OWN KEY HERE’;
// Dynamically add reCAPTCHA script
recaptchaScript.type = ‘text/javascript’;
recaptchaScript.src = ‘https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js?render=’ + recaptchaKey + ‘&ver=3.0’;
// Dynamically add CF7 script
cf7script.type = ‘text/javascript’;
cf7script.text = “!function(t,e){var n={execute:function(e){t.execute(\”” + recaptchaKey +”\”,{action:e}).then(function(e){for(var t=document.getElementsByTagName(\”form\”),n=0;n<t.length;n++)for(var c=t[n].getElementsByTagName(\”input\”),a=0;a<c.length;a++){var o=c[a];if(\”_wpcf7_recaptcha_response\”===o.getAttribute(\”name\”)){o.setAttribute(\”value\”,e);break}}})},executeOnHomepage:function(){n.execute(e.homepage)},executeOnContactform:function(){n.execute(e.contactform)}};t.ready(n.executeOnHomepage),document.addEventListener(\”change\”,n.executeOnContactform,!1),document.addEventListener(\”wpcf7submit\”,n.executeOnHomepage,!1)}(grecaptcha,{homepage:\”homepage\”,contactform:\”contactform\”});”;
// Add reCAPTCHA script
head.appendChild(recaptchaScript);
// Add CF7 script AFTER reCAPTCHA loads
setTimeout(function() {
head.appendChild(cf7script);
}, 200);
// Flag to ensure loading only happens once
captchaLoaded = true;
});
});
Step 3: Testing reCAPTCHA
Better PageSpeed Through Optimized reCAPTCHA
In SEO, it’s rarely possible to attribute a full performance improvement to a single change. Website speed usually improves through ongoing, consistent optimization work.
However, by regularly checking our PageSpeed score, we observed measurable gains after optimizing reCAPTCHA on the WEVENTURE site.
On desktop, we reached an overall score of 95.
On mobile, our score improved from 38 to 42.
We’ll continue optimizing our website and keep you updated on helpful improvements you can apply to your own site. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!
We boost your digital visibility!
Conclusion: A small tweak, a big impact on your PageSpeed
Optimizing your reCAPTCHA form is a great example of how technical SEO and performance optimization work hand in hand.
By loading the reCAPTCHA script only when needed, you reduce page load pressure, improve Core Web Vitals, and create a noticeably better user experience.
What sounds like a small code change can deliver big results:
🚀 Faster load times
📈 Higher PageSpeed scores
🔐 Fully maintained spam protection
The rule of thumb: Only load what’s truly needed — and only at the moment it’s needed.
This keeps your site fast and search-engine friendly.
