Comments on: Google Feeds Our Need for Speed

By: Ray

Ray — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 08:52:14 +0000

How did I not hear about this trackPageLoadTime code before. You are definitely right about people not being patient creatures when it comes to waiting for a site or page to load. I am fairly patient, but if I don’t see anything happening or something is happening, but taking forever then, I move along. Sometimes I will try to come back that is if I remember the site or page and try again.

By: James Spinosa

James Spinosa — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 18:16:14 +0000

I was always curious which metric Google used when incorporating load time into their ranking algorithms – the time to fetch the document or the total time for all of the advertisements & Digg This/TweetMeMe buttons and such to load.

Since they are showing the total load time in GA rather than just the fetch time it would appear that I should go through my websites and take out a few social bookmarking icons, especially for sites that I rarely receive traffic from, because I am sure Google will find a way to use this data in their ranking algorithms.

Thanks for the great post!
-Jim

By: Elise Redlin-Cook

Elise Redlin-Cook — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 15:11:44 +0000

Hi Damon,
What you’ll actually want to do is copy that one line of script that is highlighted in red in my image, and go to your header file and look at the current GA code there. You’ll want to paste the that line of code just below the line that refers to “pageview” and above the line that says “function” in the same position as in the image I shared. I hope that helps!

By: Damon Day

Damon Day — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:13:20 +0000

Hello Elise,
I have a slight that is definitely on the slow side and I am going to have to invest some time to figuring out how to quicken it up. My biggest problem I think is that I have to many fancy things that make calls off my site to load things up, like my facebook box and my oddcast characters.

I of course know I can cut it all out, but I have a hard time drawing the line between, when is it better to have speed but then also have the potential drawback of not being able to get all the information to a reader that I want.

Are you saying I can just take that script and paste it into my header file right underneath the current google analytics script? Would I need to make any modifications to it? Like the script tags on the beginning and the end? Sorry, I am big time novice when it comes to coding.

I quit computer programing after 2 semesters and decided instead to get a finance degree. Coding for me is like watching paint dry

By: Bhargav

Bhargav — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 14:22:47 +0000

Hi Elise,
Thanks for the info. It is really great that now google will count the page load time and will effect in rankings. It will be now amazing to compete using one more feature more accurately.

Thanks once again..!

Regards,

Bhargav