We're seeing it actually begin - Google penalizing slow, fat sites

Anton Chigurh · Feb 27, 2015

I've warned about this for a little over two years, Google beginning to penalize slow loading sites. And of course most of the slow loading has to do with a glut of bytes loaded - I've been seeing discussion boards SO loaded down with crap they have 2 and 3 MEGAbyte pageloads. I am sure most of us understand that most discussion board platforms run something like 2 to 300 KILObyte load, out of the box and unmodified.

Well, here's a good informative article about it.

http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2015/02/25/google-new-slow-label-web-performance/

Azareal · Feb 27, 2015

Honestly, they probably should have done this many years ago.
This isn't really much of a problem with most of the sites that I visit anyway, they mostly all load in a reasonable span of time, although some can be a little slow on mobile.

ozzy47 · Feb 27, 2015

Yep, we knew this was going to start happening. When you go on for hours with some admins telling them what needs to be done to fix the bloat, they think they know more than you, (even though they were asking for help) and don't listen to a word you have said.

Then a few months later, instead of doing what was suggested, they think removing mods from the site will magically fix it.

Alex. · Feb 27, 2015

The biggest draw of network resources is ad networks. There's several seconds difference of load time if I run adblocking or not. Ridiculous!

ozzy47 · Feb 27, 2015

Yes, ads are a problem with sites loading.

Alex. · Feb 27, 2015

ozzy47 said:
Yes, ads are a problem with sites loading.

Yes, though ideally it would be faster with general script blocking via an extension. The only issue is that apart from a bare bones whitelist you can download, a lot of sites need to be manually configured. I tossed NoScript aside back in late 2012. I originally installed it back when XSS was a big deal.

AdamD · Feb 27, 2015

vBulletin 5 sites are doomed then.

Anton Chigurh · Feb 27, 2015

Alex. said:
The biggest draw of network resources is ad networks. There's several seconds difference of load time if I run adblocking or not. Ridiculous!

Some of the third party ad providers are really, really bad for performance. That is why when I find them on a site I am helping optimize, I recommend a total audit of the revenue stream to make sure to get rid of any advert not paying its way in revenue. I used to be surprised when site owners/admins found out most of them don't chip into the kitty at all and haven't in quite a bit of time.

Alpha1 · Feb 27, 2015

its just a test at this time. But likely it will become a more important ranking signal.

Alex. · Feb 27, 2015

Anton Chigurh said:
Some of the third party ad providers are really, really bad for performance. That is why when I find them on a site I am helping optimize, I recommend a total audit of the revenue stream to make sure to get rid of any advert not paying its way in revenue. I used to be surprised when site owners/admins found out most of them don't chip into the kitty at all and haven't in quite a bit of time.

Fun fact of the day.

If you have a regular old site, not a forum, you can attain a 100/100 result on Google's speed test. However, if you us any Google analytics or adsense, it'll drop you down in score, because their own scrips aren't developed with performance in mind.

Learned that last week when I was doing some light reading into the latest blunders of adsense.

Anton Chigurh · Feb 27, 2015

Alex. said:
Fun fact of the day.

If you have a regular old site, not a forum, you can attain a 100/100 result on Google's speed test. However, if you us any Google analytics or adsense, it'll drop you down in score, because their own scrips aren't developed with performance in mind.

Learned that last week when I was doing some light reading into the latest blunders of adsense.

I stay with Patrick Meenan's WebPageTest instead of google's speed test, primarily because Meenan's testing is real world, using real world browsers and real world connections that you can select and choose from. Plus, Meenan isn't trying to sell, anything - not optimization services, anything. Not that google is, but with Meenan's tests you can really get down to the brass tacks of what's causing any problems found and there are great tutorials for web optimization that again, are real world practical solutions.

And you're right, adsense and GA really aren't interested in your performance at all.

Alex. · Feb 27, 2015

Anton Chigurh said:
I stay with Patrick Meenan's WebPageTest instead of google's speed test, primarily because Meenan's testing is real world, using real world browsers and real world connections that you can select and choose from. Plus, Meenan isn't trying to sell, anything - not optimization services, anything. Not that google is, but with Meenan's tests you can really get down to the brass tacks of what's causing any problems found and there are great tutorials for web optimization that again, are real world practical solutions.

And you're right, adsense and GA really aren't interested in your performance at all.

Can't say I know who that is. I like the other speed test that also monitors downtime. I believe MattW told me about it about two years ago or less. It's a yellow and black site. I'm afraid I can't recall the name at the moment.

ozzy47 · Feb 27, 2015

This is the one Anton was talking about, http://www.webpagetest.org/

Anton Chigurh · Feb 27, 2015

Alex. said:
Can't say I know who that is. I like the other speed test that also monitors downtime. I believe MattW told me about it about two years ago or less. It's a yellow and black site. I'm afraid I can't recall the name at the moment.

Meenan is a software engineer at Google, he's been a web performance "guru" of sorts for about a decade though.

Alex. · Feb 27, 2015

Anton Chigurh said:
Meenan is a software engineer at Google, he's been a web performance "guru" of sorts for about a decade though.

Isn't he the guy who speaks on SEO? I just remembered the service's name I was talking about. Pingdom.

Anton Chigurh · Feb 27, 2015

Alex. said:
Isn't he the guy who speaks on SEO? I just remembered the service's name I was talking about. Pingdom.

He does make speaking engagements and also, YouTube streams but personally I haven't seen any of them. I use his WebPageTest site though, liberally. It's a great tool.

ozzy47 · Feb 27, 2015

Alex. said:
Isn't he the guy who speaks on SEO? I just remembered the service's name I was talking about. Pingdom.

Are you thinking about Matt Cutts?

Alex. · Feb 27, 2015

Anton Chigurh said:
He does make speaking engagements and also, YouTube streams but personally I haven't seen any of them. I use his WebPageTest site though, liberally. It's a great tool.

I'll keep that in mind. Truthfully, I've never used speed tests. I have a fast connection at home, but certain browser extensions or in Chrome's case, built in, allows you to artificially limit download speed and measure download/fill time.

ozzy47 said:
Are you thinking about Matt Cutts?

Isn't that the WordPress CEO?

Anton Chigurh · Feb 27, 2015

Yes Meenan is all about web performance as his forte, probably not someone who would be lecturing on SEO.

Anton Chigurh · Feb 27, 2015

Alex. said:
I'll keep that in mind. Truthfully, I've never used speed tests. I have a fast connection at home, but certain browser extensions or in Chrome's case, built in, allows you to artificially limit download speed and measure download/fill time.

With WPT like I said it is all real world, with real browsers, real connections.

We're seeing it actually begin - Google penalizing slow, fat sites

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