Speed up adsense to increase page load

What to do to speed up adsense code and how this impact Google SEO factor

[knupett]

Hi.
I'm trying to find ways to load adsense ads faster on my website. When I test this, the page loads without advertising in about 3 seconds, but with adsense double. I have tried different placements of adsbygoogle.js, using async vs sync code, using defer or async in the js load, different code placements, using responsive code, and using only one adsbygoogle.js.
I know that factors may be to not use responsive ads, other ad network ++.
I'm a Google Partner and can show more ads and sticky ads. I have use adsense since 2004.
I use only adsense for ads, but before also DFP.
I have a contact person at Google, but in the last 2 years they change jobs all the time. And there is no communication beetween different department at google.

I see others in the forums got the same problem.

Have any experiences with this speed problem and how to solve it?
Does anyone know how Google looks at slow websites where their own ads are the problem?
They say that speed is a fator of SEO and, but when about 3 seconds are ads from adsense. Does anyone know if this has an impact on SEO?
Does anyone know if this can be improved with the help of using DFP instead?
Or other tools for speeding up ads?

[keyplyr]

Hi knupett and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

I'm not aware of any technique of improving the load time of Adsense since all the code comes from Adsense and the various partners.

Async is about the best they can do... and of course AMP.

On your end make sure your server supports HTTP/2 and use compression & caching.

[knupett]

Hi and thanks for the response.
I will continue try to find out of this problem, and try my contact again with google.
Also set up DFP again on some of my pages. They got some LazyLoad code for ads.
My server are in top shape now.
I can post here if I find out of this and get some answer from others or tests.
K

[trebuchet]

Don't worry, this is an ongoing issue for me too. I've optimised the bejesus out of my sites to speed up loading. Yet Adsense is the single most significant thing that slows down rendering. If you try anything that works, please let us know.

[Rasputin]

Do you earn significant adsense from other ad networks? Quite a while ago, perhaps a year ago, I realised that almost all our income was from google and criteo, and blocked the 2000+ adsense ad networks that were non-performing ( I noticed the browser often referred to these when trying to load a page, which prompted the idea).
This seemed to improve loading speed significantly when I did it but I haven't tested turning them back on again since so don't know if any problem has been rectified.
I suspect blocking these also helps get rid of some of the least desirable ads as well...

[knupett]

I have not checked this. But I've blocked some ad networks, many URLs and everything about gambling and dating. But here in Norway, the tools to block in our language are not as good as in English. I will try this tomorrow and see if speed is getting better in terms of earnings. I will also try to contact my earlier adsense contact specially about speed on smartphones,

[vivek ahlawat]

I think its first byte which matters a lot rather than complete rendering

[keyplyr]

Hi vivek ahlawat and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Interesting perspective. Why do you say that?

[frankleeceo]

I used to believe in complete rendering. But now I believe in first viewable content. My rationale is that I have started using some non-async networks that really slow down the complete rendering after all the waterfall is said and done, but since it's so far deep in the content most users really can't tell, I think. It's really about user perception. I have seen no negative impact on the adsense side and search organics side. I added this non-async advertiser in April 2017 on all my major sites...maybe time would tell and I would change my opinion.

Better speed does increase earnings, but it's less a direct cause. But I find it rather better speed boosts more pageviews, better user loyalty which in term leads to better earning. And in some cases, when speed is so bad that users give up loading. That does happen frequently given the mobile environment.

Now with ads ATF highly frowned upon, I really don't find ad loading ATF blocking content as an issue.

Ad loading is almost never an issue for me. At least unless it blocks content. I stopped trying to optimize for ad speed a while ago. But focused on ways to generate that initial viewable content first.

[keyplyr]

Agreed the user experience is all about perception, but all this is defeated if the user doesn't get to the page.

As a related side topic, page speed will have more ranking significance when the Mobile-first Index take affect.

Are you ready for the Mobile-First Index? [webmasterworld.com]

[knupett]

Now I've tested what Rasputin say and blocked many thousands of ad networks in adsense. So instead of around 3000 I now have about 140. These are the ones that give me more than 50-100 views per month.
I thoroughly measured the speed before and after with gtmetrix, 5 to 10 tests. This from test server in London to my server in Oslo.
I see an improvement of about 1 second pageload. The number of requests has decreased from around 250 to 200.
My TTFB is usually around 240 ms, first rendering is around 500 ms, the DOM finished around 600 ms, and full pageload around 4.5 seconds including adsense.
Without adsense, full pageload is 2.4 seconds.
Finally, it will take about 2 seconds for scripts that are deferred, such as AddThis Social Buttons, Analytics, and Cookie Warning.
If one goes carefully into the waterfall on loading the page, I see that what's destroying is often .gif from ads.
And I use addthis buttons, but you must defer them because they are a big bottleneck.

Then I've contacted Google, but it normally take time before I get an answer.

And then I've thought about this,
First, TTFB:
I have found this post which I think is still valid, although it is from 2013. TTFB is one of the most important factor for google SEO webpage speed and the first.

[moz.com ]

And then about load speed and google seo speed factor.
I have read that if adsense ads delay page load, then probably this will not have anything to say for google seo speed factor. This is what I've asked Google about, but waiting for answers.
Here's another post about this, that's easy to understand:
[webnots.com ]

So for now I say thank you for opinions about this and I'll be back when I hear more. SEO is not my favorite, but I see that I need to spend more time on this next to publishing good content.

[keyplyr]

Thanks for the detailed report knupett. Very interesting.

[NickMNS]

@knupett

Thanks for sharing the articles, it was an interesting read. But I wouldn't put too much value in the moz article.

Let me begin with what I think the article get right. it states that Google is intentionally ambiguous about the meaning of pages speed.

Now the methodology is completely wrong. I don't really have the time to go into the reasons, but simply if speed is only one of many factors influencing rankings and you do not account for those other factors then you have no way of knowing whether the it is speed or some other factor that impacting the results. So the expected outcome is no correlation, and how can you be sure that if you do find correlation as was the case TTFB that isn't due to some other external factor. MartiniBuster just a few days ago stated in another thread here at WW that these correlation studies are complete rubbish, this moz article is a perfect example.

The article also states:

This is true not only for generic searches (one or two keywords) but also for "long tail" searches (4 or 5 keywords) as well.

This statement shows that author has very little knowledge about statistics. The term long tail refers to the frequency of occurrence of searches for a specific keyword (or phrase) relative to the occurrence of searches of all keywords/phrases. a few keywords will be searched for many times and many (nearly infinite) keywords will be searched rarely. The keywords that are searched for rarely are said to be in the tail of distribution, and since the number is nearly infinite it is a long tail. The keywords "afagrbg" is a single word that is long tail keywords, "Where to buy a new Toyota" has six words and is not a long tail keyword. I am aware that this is a common misconception in the SEO world, but if you are writing articles about correlation research statistics you should not be perpetuating this.

As to the other article. I didn't spend much time on it, I simply scanned it. It appears to be much more recent, as it mentions the Ad-balancer feature. Again, the authors appear to be ill informed specially in regards to the ad-balancer.

My understanding is that Google does not take into account the time required to load adsense ad-units provided that the loading is not preventing the page from rendering. So use async, and you will be fine. BUT (big but), if your page loads fast and your ads don't, then you may negatively impact your AVV (active view viewable) as users will scroll past the unloaded ads while enjoying the page content they came for. This problem has been reported for AMP where ads load are much slower than the lightning fast page content.

All this to say that I think your concern is valid. One thing that could help make the whole lot faster using http/2 (as suggested by keyplyr)

[knupett]

Thank you for your input NickMNS.

Interesting thoughts about TTFB and this is something I will look into later. Exactly TTFB was mentioned earlier by vivek ahlawat.

At the end you confirm one of my questions about the Adsense load speed, that it does not inflate on SEO speed factor.
I seen that others say the same.
And adsense is the only ad network i use.

I also know that HTTP/2 will be faster, but I have my own server with W 2012 standard server and IIS + MsSql 2012, and I do not think it has the ability to run HTTP/2. Actually, I believe the web server is quite fast, even if all pages are dynamic and quite complex.