Time spent downloading a page - What does it affect?

[dhavalshreyas]

Google has been real slow in indexing my site lately and I've been trying to find out, when I found a couple of interesting points.

This is the numbers I have for "Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds) " in the Webmaster Tools:

Max: 2854
Average: 871
Min: 215

Man, those numbers are HUGE!! How much do you guys get? Could the slow indexing speed be because of this factor?

Also, is there any tool to find out the speed ourselves? Is my host really that slow? (Site in sig)

Also the google has indexed a couple of applications. Ofcourse, the size of these applications are huge compared to the HTML pages, could this have affected the "Time spent ....." factor?

Any inputs on this subject will be helpful.

[Shyflower]

The slow loading of your page could have something to do with your high use of unoptimized images, use of flash, and the 38 errors in your html. (They make the page more difficult to parse). A combination of these factors, all, or none of them could have something to do with Google's slowness in indexing your site.

Read their webmaster guidelines and see how to put a page together that they'll like.

[cheesedude]

I just checked mine. My numbers are higher than yours. Googlebot doesn't necessarily download pages from your server at top speed. Googlebot is cognizant of the stress it puts on your server.

You can change the speed at which Google downloads pages from your website in Webmaster Tools. I suggest you select the fastest option if you haven't already.

[dhavalshreyas]

The slow loading of your page could have something to do with your high use of unoptimized images, use of flash, and the 38 errors in your html. (They make the page more difficult to parse). A combination of these factors, all, or none of them could have something to do with Google's slowness in indexing your site.

Read their webmaster guidelines and see how to put a page together that they'll like.

hmm does google mind unoptimized images?

Will flash slow down the crawl rate? I thought google is starting to embrace flash..

and the errors, most of them are just "alt attribute missing" error and errors due to Flash, will those affect the bots?

Ofcourse from good design perspective and user point of view you're absolutely right...the site is ready for a major re-design....but am just curious about Google right now

[Shyflower]

Google doesn't care if your images are optimized for faster downloading or not. However, unoptimized images slow your page down on load.

I don't know if flash slows down the crawl rate. It would seem to me that it's use may speed up the crawl rate since many search engines ignore the javascript used to make it work.

HTML errors have little to do with design. Standards compliant pages are designed in css and content is coded in html or xhtml. HTML errors make parsing your page difficult, similar to how poorly written content makes reading difficult, even if you are fluent in the language used to write it.

For instance...

HTML ers hev litle 2do wit desine. Standards complint pags r desined in css...

If you hadn't read the above before, you might find that you had to read it two or three times to make heads or tails of it.

You can see what Google looks for on a page in their Webmaster's guidelines, especially the technical section.

I don't know for sure if any of this will help you or not. However, the better you make your page in every aspect, the better are your chances of increasing your ranking.

[hooperman]

If you look at the size of the pages on your site, they are not huge: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search
..so image optimisation is not an issue.

I don't know what the numbers you quoted in your first post mean, but page loading time wasn't an issue for me when I just visited your site.

[dhavalshreyas]

Google doesn't care if your images are optimized for faster downloading or not. However, unoptimized images slow your page down on load.

Google doesnt download any images now, does it?

HTML errors have little to do with design. Standards compliant pages are designed in css and content is coded in html or xhtml. HTML errors make parsing your page difficult, similar to how poorly written content makes reading difficult, even if you are fluent in the language used to write it.

Yeah I know
I meant totally REDO the thing from scratch, from the "Design phase". Not the actual designing.

HTML ers hev litle 2do wit desine. Standards complint pags r desined in css...

Hey neat way to make a point!!

I don't know for sure if any of this will help you or not. However, the better you make your page in every aspect, the better are your chances of increasing your ranking.

It does help, thanks a lot for your time Shyflower

It's from people like you that I have learnt as much as I have. No I don't mean ColeBlitz.com That one was designed BEFORE I joined SitePoint and I have to redo it soon.

Check out Letters2Troops.com

One of my recent designs, is that better?

Seriously, thanks a lot Shyflower and all the Standards fanatics at Sitepoint!!

[dhavalshreyas]

If you look at the size of the pages on your site, they are not huge: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search
..so image optimisation is not an issue.

I don't know what the numbers you quoted in your first post mean, but page loading time wasn't an issue for me when I just visited your site.

What I thought was there are some files over there, which is about 500kb-1MB

I've no idea why, but Google has indexed those too!!!

I was wondering if that was the reason why the average and maximum time shot up like that.

[Shyflower]

Check out Letters2Troops.com

One of my recent designs, is that better?

Seriously, thanks a lot Shyflower and all the Standards fanatics at Sitepoint!!

Very nice... and I'm sure well appreciated.