Page load time is one of the many factors that Google will be adding to their new ranking algorithms-Google Caffeine.
Google Caffeine, is almost completed and it is already live on one or more data centers.
Google has added a lab section to Webmaster Tools, which shows your sites performance. The section provides details of your sites load time speed and also offers suggestions for speeding up the load time of your blog.
One of the suggestions that Google recommends is adding GZIP compression to your site.
GZIP is basically a compression “tool” that compresses files before sending them to the browser.
If you’re using WordPress, you can enable compression by adding the following code to the top of your index.php file.
Open your index.php file and add the following code:
<?php
ob_start(“ob_gzhandler”);
?>
Save the file, and re-upload it.
Verify Your Compression
To check to see if you’re blog is compressed you can use this simple compression, deflate, gzip test tool.
Compression is a very effective way to speed up your site and save some bandwidth.
If you’re using WordPress on a self-hosted site, you’ll want to check with your host to ensure that GZIP is supported.
What are your thoughts on Google’s Caffeine update?
Rose DesRochersRose wears many hats. She's a wife, mother, respite worker, proud shih-tzu owner, blogger, published poet, freelance writer, as well as the owner and administrator of Today's Writing Community and Blogger Talk Blog Community. Feel free to contact her with any questions you may have.Rose DesRochers has 1216 post(s) at Rose DesRochers – World Outside My Window
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7 responses so far ↓
Wrote: Jan 31, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Hi Rose!
Using compression on a traditional web site where all of the site content is static in nature is a great way to speed things up. There is no overhead involved with the compression because you do it once before the site even goes live.
But.
A WordPress site is a completely different beast. Nearly everything a visitor sees is dynamic in some way and has been sucked from a database on the fly. The overhead of compression would be a factor on every single page load.
If the speed increase outweighs the compression overhead, then it is a good idea. Rose, did you test this on any sites? What do the numbers say?
Kind regards,
Steve.
Steve Youngs´s last blog..Getting Your Hands Dirty With Affirmations
Wrote: Jan 31, 2010 at 4:32 pm
I’m testing it on my own blog and it has increased the load time. It is recommended for sites with high traffic.
Wrote: Jan 31, 2010 at 6:26 pm
I just put it on my site. The speed increase is considerable!
I’m sold.
Thanks for this, Rose.
Steve Youngs´s last blog..Getting Your Hands Dirty With Affirmations
Wrote: Feb 2, 2010 at 8:49 am
BEWARE! Make sure your web host supports Gzip or your blog could be shut down. Gzip uses a lot of resources on shared hosting servers thus webhosts such as Hostgator don’t allow it on their shared hosting plans.
Udegbunam Chukwudi´s last blog..Tweety Mail = Twittering Made Easy Via Email
Wrote: Feb 11, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Loaded it on one of my blogs and the tools show an improvement in speed. I’ll check back and let you know what webmaster tools have to say.
Rose DesRochers Reply:
February 11th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Dave thanks for stopping by my blog. Looking forward to hearing your feedback.
Wrote: Feb 19, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Intersting.. i m using dot5hosting. I need to check with them before I implement this. Thanks for sharing info though!
Mohan´s last blog..Brinjals from my GardenVille