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Google Analytics is saying the load time on a few of our key pages is atrociously slow, but when I navigate there, it seems fine. What is the issue?
Two of our top five landing pages have load times of over 15 seconds according to Google Analytics. These pages do have a lot of content and custom animations, but every time I test it, using different browsers, devices, and connections, it seems to load within a second or two. What is happening? Is this hurting our SEO because Google thinks it’s taking forever to load?
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6 Replies
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If server is in us but consumers are in India – you might see things like that. Look at your server stats and metrics – if there are any ram, CPU, io bottlenecks at times as well.
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Google tests under “less than optimal” conditions. Think like 3G/dial up. From my understanding, the idea is to look for content that is best for the widest range of people.
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Try using something like gtmetrix to see what the loading issues might be. It might be that some things like scripts are still loading in the background meanwhile the page looks done
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Have you analyzed using search console and PageSpeed Insights? I find it’s much easier to narrow down my targets if I overlay multiple data sources, and typically the triple threat from GA, GSC, and PageSpeed Insights will reveal opportunities for improvement.
If you’re familiar with caching, your own visits to the site will not be the same as a new user. You have assets downloaded locally, allowing your repeat site visits to afford you a better and faster experience. I do not advise testing site speed on your own device or browser, even in incognito. You will get more objective / better data from tools, but if you have to audit manually, try using a proxy or something similar to force the site to behave as if you are a new user each time.
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Google analytics does not filter out the slowest X percentile of load times. You can have a perfectly fast web page and if one guy somehow ends up sending a load time of 1000 seconds then it will significantly skew your data. At the moment there is no solution to this as far as I am aware so the best you can do is play with date ranges until you narrow down which day contains the bad data and then avoid it
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Remember many users might be on mobile, with slow connection. Just because it loads fine when you’re on wifi on either desktop or mobile doesnt mean everyone has the same experience.
Hard to tell how much it hurts SEO but it definitely does not help.
You should use PageSpeedInsights to understand what is the issue.
More important than SEO is user experience. People abandon if it takes more than 3seconds.
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