While the SEO community have been chattering away about page load times as a ranking factor in 2010, Google have quiely released new much needed Labs functionality into Webmaster Tools enhancing site performance reporting.
From the Google Webmaster Support page:
Google’s goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience. Fast sites increase user satisfaction and improve the overall quality of the web (especially for those users with slow internet connections), and we hope that as webmasters improve their sites, the overall speed of the web will improve.
Login to your Google Webmaster Tools account and check out the Labs link in the left hand navigation – you’ll find the site performance tools in there.
So, what does the tool look like?
Note from Patrick – this is what it says about Blogstorm:
On average, pages in your site take 7.3 seconds to load (updated on Nov 30, 2009). This is slower than 86% of sites.
The Labs tool reports on overall site performance (visible in the chart above) with a summary of individual URL performance. Like the Page Speed plugin, the Labs tool makes basic recommendations to webmasters on improvements they might make.
This latest release certainly confirms the general feeling from SEO’s that page load will become a ranking factor in 2010. Google certainly appear to be supporting the move towards a faster web by providing easily accessible tools for Webmasters to speed up their websites.
On the (Labs) tool, Google warns:
Site Performance is a Labs feature, so it’s experimental. We’re continuously working on refining the techniques used in calculating Site Performance, and we hope to improve its usefulness over time. Nevertheless, if you have a strong reason to believe that the data shown for your site is extremely inaccurate, please let us know by posting a message in our Help Forum. We can’t guarantee a response to every inquiry, but we’ll try our best.
Hat tip to Rob Nicholson for the heads up. Thanks Rob!
Richard Baxter is Founder and Director at SEOgadget.co.uk - a UK SEO blog written with a passion for helping people and organisations to succeed in search.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
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The irony being that the slowest loading page on my site was the post I wrote covering tools to monitor site performance. I also found it odd that G WMT was reporting on pages that are behind a password – add-new.php etc. Turns out some of the data comes from toolbar…
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I’m delighted to say that I am faster than 66% of sites – but I have a problem here. Our recommendations include:
Minimize DNS lookups
The domains of the following URLs only serve one resource each. If possible, avoid the extra DNS lookups by serving these resources from existing domains:
* Go to URLhttp://d.yimg.com/mi/eu/ywa.js
* Go to URLhttp://s.analytics.yahoo.com/fpc.pl?a=100055376662&v=5.09&enc=UTF-8&b=[*****alongstring****]
Now – Google are RECOMMENDING that we uninstall Yahoo Web Analytics… Can someone with Google Analytics tell me if they are also asking you to uninstall Google Analytics? This, also. has the same load effect as YWA, surely.
If I was Yahoo – or any other company with a competing product to Google’s (like A:B testing products) I would want to look at this. Wouldn’t you?
More comments from Dixon JonesNice post Richard, interesting (but maybe not surprising) that they’ve been monitoring page load times from back in July too…
Ah, I’m just waiting for this tools, now it’s available. Thanks Rechard.
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Dixon that’s probably why they just made Google Analytics asynchronous.
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>>that’s probably why they just made Google Analytics asynchronous
Isn’t that only if you configure a page’s code differently? So they are saying on your panel that you should be deleting “ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’” from this page? I suspect not…
More comments from Dixon JonesYou know I am a little confused by this move – I remember years ago that poor sites DID take a long time to load, many sites were pretty dire in fact – but more recently I haven’t noticed many slow loading sites at all …! Oddly its frequently massive ecommerce stores that have greater issues.
@ Dixon Jones – its nothing personal – they told me to uninstall google analytics
)
(actually they told me to move it to the same domain as my site. Seems a little unreasonable
Good post Richard, site performance is another useful tool from Google, and it’s great that their focus is on improving user experience. Perhaps we’ll see other similar resources appearing in the near future, such as tools to improve accessibility and help sites comply with web standards.
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I removed Tynt when I saw the report – but Google Analytics was pretty slow too. That said, I don’t have any data on the asynchronous version yet. We’ll see!!
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Thanks for the post Patrick, wow now the page load problem is also solved by the Google itself, as we can now check for the page load speed, hats off to Google.
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Ha Lea! that’s Classic
>>> they told me to uninstall google analytics
) <<<
(actually they told me to move it to the same domain as my site. Seems a little unreasonable
Well hats off to them for being consistent. But also well done for them once again not giving you anything in black and white.
More comments from Dixon JonesWill go and check this out now and find out!
I haven’t used the tool long enough to share some success story, but this seems like a very useful utility.
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Great post! I installed Page Speed as well after visiting the Labs. Definitely something that’ll be easier to adjust and improve, and if page loading speed turns out to be factor in 2010, a vital part too.
More comments from LuciOK, I’ve looked at this and I am doubly baffled.
The tool tells me to enable gzip.
I enquired with my host and they say it is enabled.
What am I supposed to conclude?
Hmmm… input welcome, guys!
(and, you know what would be great, if they are really concerned about the number of DNS lookups? Being able to get all google inserts from a single subdomain on google. IMHO.)
Dixon: they asked me to uninstall Google Adsense!
I took a screenshot because I don’t think the message will stay long.
http://conversionr.com/monetization/google-site-performance-advises-webmasters-to-ditch-adsense/
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Yes – I fully retract my suggestion that Google were being biased. They are indeed recommending that you uninstall EVERY external javascript, including their own… Adsense; Analytics; presumably Website Optimiser code too. Hats off to them for being consistent. The tool is to help you SPEED UP your site, TRacking SLOWS DOWN your site, Ergo – optimisation is a set of compromises and now that Google owns us, the compromise has to be to choose between Google bells and whistles.
More comments from Dixon JonesJust another reason for Google to say I told you so when they start slapping sites for slow load times.
I like the summary of individual URL performance and the Page Speed plugin. These tools will be invaluable.
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I do think that basing rankings on site speed is in theory a great idea, however isn’t it a bit biased towards plain text sites. I know of some great flash sites (as much as I hate flash) and some other graphic intense sites.
I can also see this bearing some impact on SEO and Marketing efforts, surely it makes sense now for SEO Consultants to suggest a quicker loading site to all clients? (not that they shouldn’t be already)
More comments from InfoserveMarketingI consider any development like this deeply significant. Obviously Google want us to incorporate these considerations, otherwise there wouldn’t be a service like webmaster tools. I don’t believe a lot of what Matt Cutts says but I do believe him when he says If you help us we’ll help you. Thi is like a signpost – how to rank in Google. Dumb not to do it.
BB
I think the safest bet is to assume that anything Google measures through Webmaster Tools will contribute to SEO performance.
I’m with Consulting Google and believe this tool will only help those who choose to use it. Not sure I agree with Tires regarding Google slapping a site for slow load times. Obviously, if a site is too slow the user will click off. Yet what constitutes slow these days?
Nice post, its quite ironic my first ever website (which is still up!) is still my fastest loading site with all the clunky tables and heavy .gifs…
Excellent article and a tool which I will be using alot to increase my websites load time. In time I will judge if this actually helps with pagerank!
Yeh my site which sells mephedrone plant food is pretty slow at loading at the mo. Got quite a few animated graphical elements on it, which i guess are slowing it down. But this gives the site a better feel though!?
Is there anyway to keep animated elements as well as speed up the loading time of the pages within your domain? I’m pretty new to all this, literally clueless!
good article on how to increase website load time.
builds up the loading times nicely
Ranking in Google is darn near impossible anymore. Probably just the sign of the times and being able to weed out out all the scams are a goo thing!
Good to read !! This is something not new but the way its explained and with everyone reviews & support i guess the post really became genuine
Thanks
Thanks for the informative post. I shall be reading more of your blog and suggesting it to friends in the future! Thanks again!
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