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Hear, hear. If you want to incentivise not delivering multi-megabyte "experiences" to people, I could see a case for feeding page weight into the ranking algor

Hear, hear. If you want to incentivise not delivering multi-megabyte "experiences" to people, I could see a case for feeding page weight into the ranking algorithm. Then people would be less inclined to have tag managers loading tag managers loading a zillion random js trackers. I have personally saved at least one decent laptop from landfill by installing uBlock Origin on it, and making the web usable again.

jacquesm 9y ago
Connection count multiplied by number of bytes transferred. That would get rid of the cruft on the web in a heartbeat. Every SEO consultant would suddenly have an actual job, playing code golf on CSS and HTML to deliver the content in the minimum number of bytes possible.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  This penalizes data-heavy websites, though, no? For example, I can see how a photojournalism piece with lots of photos would be ranked to hell, whereas a content-free text piece would be ranked very highly.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    But on the same subject all pages would be data heavy. Only where a data heavy page would compete with a similar page that was lightweight would the one be ranked above the other. But your average news page would weigh in roughly the same no matter what the source was. Assuming you'd strip out all the cruft. For reference, I optimized my website a while ago and ended up with the average page being < 15K. https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-fastest-blog-in-the-world https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-fastest-blog-in-the-world Try it, on any connection in normal use today it should load faster than you can blink. Add a few pictures and it would still work quite comfortably.
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      > But on the same subject all pages would be data heavy. Not all of them. For a trivial example, an in-depth article about a topic would be penalized more than a more epidermic one, because it would contain more text, graphs, etc. > For reference, I optimized my website a while ago and ended up with the average page being < 15K. I feel you, I absolutely hate that my website uses a bunch of stuff for almost no reason. 80 KB of CSS or 90 KB of font isn't awesome, and I started a project to provide information on how to create lighter websites (https://www.lightentheweb.com/ https://www.lightentheweb.com/, stalled a bit). All I'm saying here, though, is that the solution is more nuanced than "heavier = lower". AMP is definitely not a step in the right direction, though. I wonder if Google could give sites that used a specific CSS file and no JS a bump, rather than loading things on their own domain.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        > For a trivial example, an in-depth article about a topic would be penalized more than a more epidermic one, because it would contain more text, graphs, etc. But such trivial examples should be trivial to get right no? It's all about the relative weight of the various factors that determine the ranking and a 'lightweight' article could be recognized as such.
        StavrosK 9y ago
        Well, that's my point, it's not trivial to automatically recognize which photos are content and which are style. You want to have many content photos, but having many style photos probably means cruft. How do you recognize which is which?
        jacquesm 9y ago
        How does AMP recognize this right now?
        StavrosK 9y ago
  - swiley 9y ago
    Most useful content on the web is text. Photojournalism is a niche exception and those pages could be linked to from articles. A lot of the useless pages are 3 stories of scrolling through large images with very little text. Also, "data" as in tables and small/vector charts isn't all that big.
    - intoverflow2 9y ago
      > Most useful content on the web is text Tell that to a photographer, designer, artist, illustrator, etc
      - swiley 9y ago
        I would, their requirements are niche. Most people need text, possibly with one or two small photos or illustrations.
        intoverflow2 9y ago
        Think you may be looking at this only through a developer lens. Bet if you showed anyone under 15 an internet without pictures and video they'd consider it broken.
  - vacri 9y ago
    Weight photos differently to js?
  - rmc 9y ago
    A photojournalism page would have a low connectivity count. It wouldn't be connecting to various other 3rd party websites
- mulmen 9y ago
  Google already wrote AMP which parses page content and presents the user with Google's ideal version of the page. Just include the delta in the ranking. The more a page has to be "cleaned" by AMP the lower it ranks.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Clever!
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    That’s... not really what AMP does. I mean, kinda, but not really. You have to cater to it specifically
    - mulmen 9y ago
      Yeah good point. In general something like that could still work though. Whatever characteristics of a page Google is trying to "fix" with AMP could just be added to the ranking algorithm.
      - abritinthebay 9y ago
        Absolutely
  - igravious 9y ago
    Exactly, make it an internal delta signal thing rather than pushing it externally on the entire web. Yes they can because of their position and size, but should they? No they shouldn't.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  Connections^2 to penalize the worst offenders with 20+ cross site scripts most.
- dwild 9y ago
  What does the connection count bring anything? All that matter would be the total number of bytes transferred. I don't think that would be a good metric for relevance though and in most case, the total size isn't an issue. Which is why AMP is good, low file size when it's needed, full size when it's not.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
always_good 9y ago
> I could see a case for feeding page > weight into the ranking algorithm I see people saying this, but it doesn't make sense. You're using google to try and find something. I don't see how penalizing the thing you're looking for helps you find what you're looking for. Just sounds like yet another thing that gives HNers boners at the expense of everyone else's experience. "Hah, yeah get'em! They deserve it!"
- jacquesm 9y ago
  It won't help you to find what you are looking for but it incentivizes the websites to reduce the weight of their pages and that is ostensibly what AMP tries to achieve.
jonas21 9y ago
Google already tried this, back in 2010. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-i...
ukyrgf 9y ago
> I have personally saved at least one decent laptop from landfill by installing uBlock Origin on it, and making the web usable again. For me, I'd given up on trying to browse the web on my smartphone until Firefox Focus came along. I realize Firefox for Android now allows extensions, but I still used it as a typical browser. I signed into my accounts, I had expectations for a personalized experience, etc. With Focus, it's just a quick visit to a site and then it disappears. I can find the information I want, quickly, yet again.
sametmax 9y ago
That's what google would do if they wanted to help the web, and not just faking they do. They used to, now they are just playing pretend for PR reasons.

jacquesm 9y ago

Connection count multiplied by number of bytes transferred. That would get rid of the cruft on the web in a heartbeat. Every SEO consultant would suddenly have an actual job, playing code golf on CSS and HTML to deliver the content in the minimum number of bytes possible.

StavrosK 9y ago
This penalizes data-heavy websites, though, no? For example, I can see how a photojournalism piece with lots of photos would be ranked to hell, whereas a content-free text piece would be ranked very highly.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  But on the same subject all pages would be data heavy. Only where a data heavy page would compete with a similar page that was lightweight would the one be ranked above the other. But your average news page would weigh in roughly the same no matter what the source was. Assuming you'd strip out all the cruft. For reference, I optimized my website a while ago and ended up with the average page being < 15K. https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-fastest-blog-in-the-world https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-fastest-blog-in-the-world Try it, on any connection in normal use today it should load faster than you can blink. Add a few pictures and it would still work quite comfortably.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    > But on the same subject all pages would be data heavy. Not all of them. For a trivial example, an in-depth article about a topic would be penalized more than a more epidermic one, because it would contain more text, graphs, etc. > For reference, I optimized my website a while ago and ended up with the average page being < 15K. I feel you, I absolutely hate that my website uses a bunch of stuff for almost no reason. 80 KB of CSS or 90 KB of font isn't awesome, and I started a project to provide information on how to create lighter websites (https://www.lightentheweb.com/ https://www.lightentheweb.com/, stalled a bit). All I'm saying here, though, is that the solution is more nuanced than "heavier = lower". AMP is definitely not a step in the right direction, though. I wonder if Google could give sites that used a specific CSS file and no JS a bump, rather than loading things on their own domain.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      > For a trivial example, an in-depth article about a topic would be penalized more than a more epidermic one, because it would contain more text, graphs, etc. But such trivial examples should be trivial to get right no? It's all about the relative weight of the various factors that determine the ranking and a 'lightweight' article could be recognized as such.
      - StavrosK 9y ago
        Well, that's my point, it's not trivial to automatically recognize which photos are content and which are style. You want to have many content photos, but having many style photos probably means cruft. How do you recognize which is which?
        jacquesm 9y ago
        How does AMP recognize this right now?
        StavrosK 9y ago
- swiley 9y ago
  Most useful content on the web is text. Photojournalism is a niche exception and those pages could be linked to from articles. A lot of the useless pages are 3 stories of scrolling through large images with very little text. Also, "data" as in tables and small/vector charts isn't all that big.
  - intoverflow2 9y ago
    > Most useful content on the web is text Tell that to a photographer, designer, artist, illustrator, etc
    - swiley 9y ago
      I would, their requirements are niche. Most people need text, possibly with one or two small photos or illustrations.
      - intoverflow2 9y ago
        Think you may be looking at this only through a developer lens. Bet if you showed anyone under 15 an internet without pictures and video they'd consider it broken.
- vacri 9y ago
  Weight photos differently to js?
- rmc 9y ago
  A photojournalism page would have a low connectivity count. It wouldn't be connecting to various other 3rd party websites
mulmen 9y ago
Google already wrote AMP which parses page content and presents the user with Google's ideal version of the page. Just include the delta in the ranking. The more a page has to be "cleaned" by AMP the lower it ranks.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Clever!
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  That’s... not really what AMP does. I mean, kinda, but not really. You have to cater to it specifically
  - mulmen 9y ago
    Yeah good point. In general something like that could still work though. Whatever characteristics of a page Google is trying to "fix" with AMP could just be added to the ranking algorithm.
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      Absolutely
- igravious 9y ago
  Exactly, make it an internal delta signal thing rather than pushing it externally on the entire web. Yes they can because of their position and size, but should they? No they shouldn't.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
Connections^2 to penalize the worst offenders with 20+ cross site scripts most.
dwild 9y ago
What does the connection count bring anything? All that matter would be the total number of bytes transferred. I don't think that would be a good metric for relevance though and in most case, the total size isn't an issue. Which is why AMP is good, low file size when it's needed, full size when it's not.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

always_good 9y ago

> I could see a case for feeding page > weight into the ranking algorithm I see people saying this, but it doesn't make sense. You're using google to try and find something. I don't see how penalizing the thing you're looking for helps you find what you're looking for. Just sounds like yet another thing that gives HNers boners at the expense of everyone else's experience. "Hah, yeah get'em! They deserve it!"

jacquesm 9y ago
It won't help you to find what you are looking for but it incentivizes the websites to reduce the weight of their pages and that is ostensibly what AMP tries to achieve.

jonas21 9y ago

Google already tried this, back in 2010. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-i...

ukyrgf 9y ago

> I have personally saved at least one decent laptop from landfill by installing uBlock Origin on it, and making the web usable again. For me, I'd given up on trying to browse the web on my smartphone until Firefox Focus came along. I realize Firefox for Android now allows extensions, but I still used it as a typical browser. I signed into my accounts, I had expectations for a personalized experience, etc. With Focus, it's just a quick visit to a site and then it disappears. I can find the information I want, quickly, yet again.

sametmax 9y ago

That's what google would do if they wanted to help the web, and not just faking they do. They used to, now they are just playing pretend for PR reasons.