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High network utilization doesn't have to mean an unresponsive website. Google cares more about responsiveness. A site is responsive if you can start reading it

by Sephr 6y ago

High network utilization doesn't have to mean an unresponsive website. Google cares more about responsiveness. A site is responsive if you can start reading it quickly, regardless of how much network traffic is being used by ads, as long as the ads are loaded asynchronously after the primary content. Penalizing for high total network traffic is short-sighted and would prevent most video hosts from ranking well in Google Search.

CogitoCogito 6y ago
Do you know how they decide if someone is able to start reading quickly? Personally I find asynchronously loading ads around the text so distracting that I basically can't focus on reading until it's done loading so for me I basically need to wait for the whole site needs to load anyway. In the same vein, I would prefer Google down score all sites with anything but entirely static ads.
- Jaruzel 6y ago
  One of the performance checks they use is how quickly the body text renders into a readable format as a page loads. If your site has slow loading web fonts, AND you haven't specified a fall-back font (i.e. serif, or sans-serif etc.), Google will penalise it.
- Andrew_Quentin 6y ago
  They decide by the Wired guys having a coffee with the Google guys or a chat in some party. Google is people afterall. Corrupt as fuck. That's why plenty call it gulag.
ddalex 6y ago
having worked specifically on website responsiveness improvement for a medium-size publisher, I can certainly attest that ads heavily influence performance, even if added asynchronously after the first paint, or after the site becomes interactive; we tried every trick in the book, and then some. the main reason is that ads are coded by people that have no interest in performance. I've seen huge JS libraries loaded to display a static image. I've seen multiple versions of the same library loaded in the same ad. I've seen things that wouldn't fly anywhere else. Why? Because the ad agencies are under a lot of time pressure to make things quickly, and there is NO penalty if the quality is terrible. So they take what worked last campaign, add new tags to satisfy the new customer, and ship it out. It displays? Perfect. It's huge and slow as hell? Who cares, it's not their website that gets slow as molasses.

by Sephr 6y ago

CogitoCogito 6y ago

Do you know how they decide if someone is able to start reading quickly? Personally I find asynchronously loading ads around the text so distracting that I basically can't focus on reading until it's done loading so for me I basically need to wait for the whole site needs to load anyway. In the same vein, I would prefer Google down score all sites with anything but entirely static ads.

Jaruzel 6y ago
One of the performance checks they use is how quickly the body text renders into a readable format as a page loads. If your site has slow loading web fonts, AND you haven't specified a fall-back font (i.e. serif, or sans-serif etc.), Google will penalise it.
Andrew_Quentin 6y ago
They decide by the Wired guys having a coffee with the Google guys or a chat in some party. Google is people afterall. Corrupt as fuck. That's why plenty call it gulag.

ddalex 6y ago

having worked specifically on website responsiveness improvement for a medium-size publisher, I can certainly attest that ads heavily influence performance, even if added asynchronously after the first paint, or after the site becomes interactive; we tried every trick in the book, and then some. the main reason is that ads are coded by people that have no interest in performance. I've seen huge JS libraries loaded to display a static image. I've seen multiple versions of the same library loaded in the same ad. I've seen things that wouldn't fly anywhere else. Why? Because the ad agencies are under a lot of time pressure to make things quickly, and there is NO penalty if the quality is terrible. So they take what worked last campaign, add new tags to satisfy the new customer, and ship it out. It displays? Perfect. It's huge and slow as hell? Who cares, it's not their website that gets slow as molasses.