Google Webmaster Tools Site performance

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by Andreas

Well, I think I do have some basic understandig on networking (our forums are generating ~ 70 million Page Impressions/Month)

Feel free to post your URL and i'll post my loading times (6 MBit DSL @ Home, 16 MBit DSL @ Work) :-)


You are absolutely right - the Google Webmaster Tools Site Performance is not measuring you raw server throughput/response time but end-user performance (which should be < 2 seconds for the complete page, otherwise you will loose visitors).

Andreas,

I don't need to post the URL. We have many hosts in the US and EU and we measure very easily from high speed datacenters on the Internet backbone, which is faster than your edge node. Our load times are very fast. We know what we are doing, I promise you. We are not vBulletin theorists, we serve real pages and over 4M a month to over 2 M users :-)

Also, you are misleading in your blanket statement:

.... end-user performance (which should be < 2 seconds for the complete page, otherwise you will loose visitors).

You can have the faster server in the world. If you end user is in a slow link in India or Malaysia there is nothing you can do to speed up the process. We deliver static content with a CDN, having used both SimpleCDN and CloudFront/S3 with global nodes in the US, EU and Asia, so we know what we are talking about.

It matters zero if you have the fastest servers and the closest CDN nodes if your end user is on a slow link, slow part of the world, etc. Users in a slow part of the world are used to slow load speeds because they cannot do any better than that. Yours statement assumes the user has fast access every day and is used to fast access. That does not apply to much of the world outside of developed countries like the US, developed EU countries, Japan, Singapore, S. Korea, etc.

I find it funny (but it's OK, I'll try to be patient) that are you making generic statements as if you are talking to a novice, but nevermind. Let's move the level of conversation up to a more professional level where you understand you are talking to someone who has a busy server (but not busy like yours!), distributed architecture, and can easily use many nodes to measure from, etc. We know the Google Performance stats are meaningless. Our users and moderators measure load times for us and post!

In addition, I can easily run Firebug and their performance tools when I am on travel to third world countries, and do so nearly every day, and I am currently on a slowish link on holiday in Asia. We have over 20 moderators around the world and they post very quickly if the load is slow..... LOL

I am telling you with 100% confidence, not theory, that the Google Toolbar performance tool is very inaccurate and has very little useful meaning. You can argue with me until we both grow weary of the discussion; but you will not change the facts and figures of real-world global network operations.

Your arguments only hold true if the user base is in developed countries with high speed Internet access. The real world is much bigger than that and so are many forum user bases.