Given google’s recently announced plan to factor site speed into it’s search algorithm in Q1 I decided to take a look at their new site speed tool in the Google labs section of the webmaster tools interface. The results are below.
Bottom line some really quick wins, kill the delicious button on every page of my paper airplane site that is harming my load time. Replace the old google analytics code with the new google analytics asynchronous snippet and get the whole site gzip compressed (am really bummed my shared hosting doesn’t do this already, seems an easy win).
Nice tool released by Google so you should all take a look at it and at least nail the quick wins. This will be a big deal in Q1 I am sure (although that being said caffeine as a whole is gonna be interesting).
The other interesting note today is here from search engine land google is now personalizing results for everyone with a google cookie. My search has gotten better and better thanks to this but as someone who worries about SEO I often look at the non-personalized results too. Personalized and non-personalized are diverging rapidly so really understanding user behavior and making your site compelling is growing more and more important.
Long term optimizing for user experience is key to maximize success in Google (site speed, low bounce rate etc…) and social media. I think it’s great that generating traffic and user satisfaction are coming closer and closer together.
I think a lot of people had to make some changes. Do you think they worked in the long term?
Posted by: Payday Loans | May 24, 2010 at 09:06 AM
I thought about this coming when Google introduced their Lab tab in the Webmaster Tools page. Here you'll find how fast your page loads and other tools like the Page Speed add on for FF. http://www.hotfileseek.com
Posted by: April | May 20, 2010 at 10:55 AM
I am also aware of this... Nice blog post... I thought about this coming when Google introduced their Lab tab in the Webmaster Tools page. Here you'll find how fast your page loads and other tools like the Page Speed add on for FF... I enjoy your blog and insights Alex!
Posted by: Advanced Acai | January 29, 2010 at 11:58 PM
Why is it that my computer sometimes slows to a crawl when I sign in to Facebook. I bought a new computer because I thought the problem was with my old one ... but this problem still exists with my new HP! What's going on here? And WHY do I pick up so many viruses here on Facebook? Can't you people do something about all the viruses on the apps? I was practically assaulted when I tried to answer an invite to "We're Related"!!!
Posted by: Carole davis | December 13, 2009 at 10:43 AM
good point DG this should be fixed over Christmas
Posted by: alexschultz | December 05, 2009 at 11:52 AM
How about optimizing download time for your cocktail widget.
It's one of the first things for me to look at removing to increase my sitespeed and download time!
It can really hurt your backlinks if more people optimize for sitespeed and you overlook this particular source of backlinks for your site!
Posted by: Dennis Goedegebuure | December 04, 2009 at 09:37 PM