Google, as one of the primary search engines used by the majority of people, is also the one to which many look when evaluating their web sites. Once one has a website on search engines in Pleasanton or the surrounding area, it is desirable to make it as accessible as possible. One of the items of which website owners like to keep themselves apprised is the time it takes to load their web pages.

Google’s speed report, available through Google Analytics, includes several elements of information about the evaluated site. It checks for items such as content, sources of traffic, and technology used to access the site. These items are consolidated into a report that can be perused to increase the speed and effectiveness of the site.

Google Adwords also has an evaluation of page load times for the landing page of sites that utilize this tool, to help determine the Quality Score of the keywords on the site. This score affects the ad position and price of minimum bids. The page load time calculated is compared with other sites in the same region (for example, the United States, if the site is in Pleasanton or the Bay Area).

Site performance can be checked through Google itself with the Site Performance tool, located under Labs in the website Tools menu. This will give an overview of the website that includes the average page load time on the site, as well as whether it is faster or slower than other sites checked.

Page load times start with how long it takes to load the HTML part of the site. Regardless of the site’s actual location or intended target, the testing is done in the United States. Google’s internet connection is faster than the average user’s connection, so it will probably report a slightly faster load time than an individual user might see if timing load time on his home connection. This time is compared to pages found on the same web host as the site being evaluated, and if the site’s load time is more than three seconds longer than the average of the other sites, it is reported as slow. Some browsers, such as Firefox, have an add-on or plug-in that will allow users to calculate page load speeds for themselves.

Speeding up the load time of a website on search engines in Pleasanton is an important part of knowing the load time. If the site loads more slowly than average, it can be adjusted to improve the loading speed. Some suggestions include consolidating CSS, Javascript, and similar code into separate files; removing unnecessary media; cleaning up the code and using smaller files. It would also help to have audio or video files as optional rather than loading automatically. Actually resize photos instead of using the code to make them smaller.

While some say a site can take up to (but no more than) 10 seconds to load, most people consider even five seconds too slow. Many users will not wait even that long for a page to load. If a website on search engines in Pleasanton and the Bay Area is to get the attention it deserves, checking its page load time is critical.