Google Webmaster Tools Site performance

[tpearl5]

I'm curious what other vbulletin users are seeing for this new labs feature.

Here's what mine says:

On average, pages in your site take 14.1 seconds to load (updated on Dec 18, 2009). This is slower than 97% of sites.

Yuck! And this is with two very powerful servers (8 cores each), and offloading a lot of static content to CDN's. I do have a lot of hacks and custom stuff going on, so I'm sure that doesn't help.

What is yours?

[imported_silkroad]

We have the same problem..... strange. Is it related to SimpleCDN?

On average, pages in your site take 10.3 seconds to load (updated on Dec 18, 2009). This is slower than 93% of sites. The chart below shows how your site's average page load time has changed over the last few months. For your reference, it also shows the 20th percentile value across all sites, separating slow and fast load times.

However, our site loads much faster, so we are confused as well

[tpearl5]

I'm mainly using Amazon s3 & cloudfront, so I don't think so. The data comes from users using the google toolbar, explained here: http://www.google.com/support/webmas...r=158541&hl=en

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

I'm mainly using Amazon s3 & cloudfront, so I don't think so. The data comes from users using the google toolbar, explained here: http://www.google.com/support/webmas...r=158541&hl=en

Ah.... Interesting... good to know is is not a problem specific to SimpleCDN.

When we check using other tools, the load time is normally less than 500ms, so I don't know why Google reports such an odd performance/load number.

Any ideas?

[tpearl5]

I'm guessing it's because not all users are connecting to our sites at broadband speed - some could be farther or closer to the server. Relatively 10 seconds is better than my 14 though.

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

I'm guessing it's because not all users are connecting to our sites at broadband speed - some could be farther or closer to the server. Relatively 10 seconds is better than my 14 though.

You think Google Webmaster Performance is measure from their Search Engine referrals and not directly by GoogleBot?

I am not sure I would agree with that, but I don't yet have any factual basis to offer any counter suggestions. However, I don't think Google measures performance based on limitations of user clients. That would not be accurate at all.

[petchat]

I get 2.2 seconds on average, on a middle of the road VPS, with a few hacks installed .

[tpearl5]

Originally Posted by imported_silkroad

You think Google Webmaster Performance is measure from their Search Engine referrals and not directly by GoogleBot?

I am not sure I would agree with that, but I don't yet have any factual basis to offer any counter suggestions. However, I don't think Google measures performance based on limitations of user clients. That would not be accurate at all.

Well, it specifically states that the data comes from google toolbar...

Page load time is the total time from the moment the user clicks on a link to your page until the time the entire page is loaded and displayed in a browser. It is collected directly from users who have installed the Google Toolbar and have enabled the optional PageRank feature.

(read further down in 'if data is missing or seems inaccurate)

I see what you mean, but after I've thought about it, it is a good way to measure, on average, what your users are experiencing. If more of your users are having a hard time loading your site then perhaps the servers are too far away from the users or a full CDN solution should be considered. For example, I'm sure if I had an influx of users from India that average load time would go up since my main servers are located in the US.

Likewise, if a low number of people using the google toolbar go to your site, and those people happen to have broadband connections, then you're not really getting accurate data - especially if your audience doesn't like toolbars. Yeh, I'm sure the tool could be more intuitive. I guess that's why they put these lines in there:

Data may also not be available for your site if not enough users (with Google Toolbar and the PageRank feature turned on) have visited your site's pages during the time period displayed.... If your site is small, or doesn't attract a lot of traffic, the results may be slightly skewed.

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

Well, it specifically states that the data comes from google toolbar...

Oh, I see.. it says:

It shows you the average page load time for pages in your site, the trend over the last few months, and some suggestions on how to make the pages load faster. Page load time is the total time from the moment the user clicks on a link to your page until the time the entire page is loaded and displayed in a browser. It is collected directly from users who have installed the Google Toolbar and have enabled the optional PageRank feature

You are right! If you have users on slow links, you will see very slow results. If you have users on very fast links who don't have the Toolbar installed, their results will not count.

This is a terrible measure of performance!

--------------- Added [DATE]1261473677[/DATE] at [TIME]1261473677[/TIME] ---------------

Originally Posted by petchat

I get 2.2 seconds on average, on a middle of the road VPS, with a few hacks installed .

It has very little to do with your server, LOL.

We have a super dedicated server with 16GB of memory and plenty of power and our server is very fast.

The issue is where your users are who have installed Google Toolbar. The further away from your server and the slower their link, the worse performance.

In other words, this Google Labs feature is not very useful at all on sites with global traffic.

[Princeton]

In other words, this Google Labs feature is not very useful at all on sites with global traffic.

it doesn't matter where your visitors are coming from - a high # is an indicator that your site needs tweaking

it's a useful tool but don't rely on it - use it as an indicator of how well your changes are working

this tool averages the amount of time that the entire page takes to load to the end-user ... this includes html, images, scripts, javascript execution, css, etc ... your server may output the html in 0.9sec but by the time the page loads completely to the end-user that 0.9sec may turn into 12 sec

unlike Googlebots this tool parses all pages - this includes pages that are disallowed via robot.tx and other pages that are not normally indexed by Googlebots

for example, reply.php, newrepley.php, etc, etc are pages that are not normally accessed by Googlebots

however, the toolbar will count these pages in your overall site performance
(because of the javascript involved in displaying the wysiwyg editor these pages render slow which will increase your site performance average)

another thing that may affect how fast your page load is your page design - to learn more about this read a few of my articles (found in sig)

if you are currently getting a high number - it means you need to work on your pages...
Google has already stated that it may use web page speed for indexing pages.