Adsense slowing page loading?

[Sanenet]

Hi,

Is it just my imagination, or does Adsense take a much longer time to load then other adverts? For example, on The Register, I noticed their page load time went down *quite* a bit when they started using it.

I seem to have gotten around this by putting it in a seperate table (not surrounded), so the rest of the page loads before it... but has anyone else noticed this?

[Zygoot]

Mostly I don't notice longer loading times of my pages. But I've had a few times (two or three times) that it slowed down the loading of one of my pages.

[Gibble]

Well anything that has to leave your server and connect to another server will slow your load time down.

But google seems to have done a good job of load balancing as it doesn't affect pages too much, maybe a fraction of a second on average.

[bether2]

I definitely notice that the AdSense ads slow down the loading of my pages. It was and continues to be a consideration as I'm decideing how many pages to use the ads on.

My pages loaded pretty quickly before, so maybe the additional time to load seems larger proportionally.

Someone mentioned in some earlier thread that they thought the number of sites you have listed in your "filter list" might affect the loading time (ie, google has to filter out all of the sites before loading appropriate ones). Does anyone have an opinion on this - or any evidence to back this up?

Beth

[Jenstar]

I noticed a slower load time over the weekend, but today it seems to be lightning fast. My pages are also quick-loading, and I am not noticing delay at all for the AdSense ads to load onto the page.

<added>I do not have any sites listed in my "filter list". This is an interesting thought - do others that are experiencing slow load time have many sites listed in their filter lists? Perhaps mine is fast because I do not have any sites to be filtered, but on the flip side, I did notice it much slower to load on the weekend.</added>

[devlin]

No filter lists here. And, yes, there's a slight lag. But no worse than all the other devices (SSIs etc) that I have.

Probably no worse (or maybe even slightly better) than the other ad server (Burst Media) that I have on my sites.

D

[bether2]

I've got about 50 or 60 sites on my filter list.

[Imaster]

Its slowed down my pages by a couple of second :( I believe javascript does delay the page loading.

[danny]

I'm sufficiently worried by this that on my main site I'm only using AdSense right at the end of pages.

[Jenstar]

Suddenly this evening, the AdSense ads are taking 5+ seconds to load after the page loads. I am just thankful it doesn't freeze the webpage like what happens when a site is having trouble reaching a third party server for a pop-up ad.

The other problem with this, particularly if you use a 468 banner at the top, is that your visitor could potentially scroll down the screen within the 5 seconds it takes the AdSense ads to load. You could easily lose clicks vs. impressions, because those visitors would still count for impressions even if they did not ever see the ads because Adsense was too slow loading.

[RobbieD]

Great point.

I am also noticing very slow loading times right now.
I think they might be updating the system or they are overloaded because everyone on the net is putting thier ads up in a very short period of time!

[Jenstar]

because everyone on the net is putting thier ads up in a very short period of time!

I know Google won't release any specific numbers, but the number of signups for AdSense in the past month has got to be pretty impressive.

My load times now seem to be back to lightning fast, so it could have been server work that was causing the delays earlier.

[RobbieD]

I am getting Non-Profit Ads running in most places for a few minutes then it's back to normal. They are definately doing something because the stats are at zero and targeting is off and on.

Stay tuned we'll see soon. I'm not too worried... This is Google.

[killroy]

Well, thanks to CSS positioning my ads, jsut like my navigation load after my content, and therefore AdSense do not slow my pages at all. They take a few moments to show though after the page's loaded up.

SN