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Monday, May 03, 2010
Perhaps you heard our announcement that
speed is a signal in rankings,
but didn't know where to start. We'd like to help foster a lasting relationship between you and a
responsive experience for your users. Last week I filmed my updated presentation from
"The Need For Speed: Google Says It Matters"
which includes three first steps to understanding site performance. So grab headphones and some
popcorn, then
verify ownership of your website
and download a
plugin,
and we'll all be comfy with site performance in no time.
Just curious about the Q&A;? No problem! Here you go:
Is it possible to check my server response time from different areas around the world?
Yes. WebPagetest.org
can test performance from the United States (both East and West Coast—go West Coast! :),
United Kingdom, China, and New Zealand.
What's a good response time to aim for?
First, if your competition is fast, they may provide a better user experience than your site for
your same audience. In that case, you may want to make your site
better, stronger, faster....
Otherwise, studies by
Akamai
claim 2 seconds as the threshold for ecommerce site "acceptability." Just as an FYI, at Google we
aim for under a half-second.
Does progressive rendering help users?
Definitely! Progressive rendering is when a browser can display content as it's available
incrementally rather than waiting for all the content to display at once. This provides users
faster visual feedback and helps them feel more in control.
Bingexperimented with progressive rendering
by sending users their visual header (like the logo and searchbox) quickly, then the results/ads
once they were available. Bing found a 0.7% increase in satisfaction with progressive rendering.
They commented that this improvement compared with full feature rollout. How can you implement
progressive rendering techniques on your site? Put
stylesheets at the top of the page.
This allows a browser to start displaying content ASAP. Page speed plugin, videos, articles, and
help forum are all found at
code.google.com/speed/.
Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead
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