Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
High resolution (retina) images vs load time
-
I have an ecommerce website and have a product slider with 3 images.
Currently, I serve them at the native size when viewed on a desktop browser (374x374).
I would like to serve them using retina image quality (748px).
However how will this affect my ranking due to load time?
Does Google take into account image load times even though these are done asynchronously? Also as its a slider, its only the first image which needs to load. Do the other images contribute at all to the page load time?
-
"Large pictures tend to be bad for user experience."
I disagree. I think what you mean is slower loading is bad for the user experience. Higher quality pictures are better for the user experience.
I've been looking into deferring loading of the additional slider images. That should definitely improve load time as all the bandwidth can be used to download the first slider image.
Also the first slider image if you use a progressive format should show something quickly and then improve over time.
-
You also have to keep in mind that users will access your site from mobile devices and that the larger the page the longer it takes to load fully. You may lose some people during the time it takes to load the page. My website used to have a slider with three images. i removed the slider and replaced it with one static image. Large pictures tend to be bad for user experience.
-
Hey Dwayne
They are big images but from experience I have never seen a meaningful impact from these kind of changes (in around 15 years). Maybe work on optimising the images themselves as best as possible to bring the overall size down as much as possible. Sure, if your site is a slow loading nightmare and this is just the final straw then it may be an issue but by the sounds of it you are already taking that into consideration and your site is well hosted and performs better than most of everything else out there.
But, as ever in this game, my advice would be to be aware of possible implications, weigh up the pros and cons and then test extensively. If you see an impact in your loading time and search results (and more importantly in user interaction, bounce etc) after changing this one factor then you know you can roll it back.
Hope that helps
Marcus
-
Hi,
Its not that small a change...the size of each image will quadruple from around 10kb to 40kb. As there are three images thats 90kb more data. Which is around 20% of the total page size.
That's interesting what you mention about the first byte load time. I would have thought that was overly simple and would definitely have assumed Google would actually be more concerned with how long it takes for the page "to load" (e.g. using their pagespeed metrics).
I've optimized my site extensively and have pagespeed score of 95% and I use the amazon AWS servers.
I agree with your idea about doing what's right for my users. But if Google includes the image load time then my site will rank poorly and then I won't have any users!
In summary, I think what this question really comes down to is how does Google calculate page load times and does this include image load time and does it include load time for all images (even ones which aren't being rendered in the slider).
Thanks,
Dwayne
-
Hey
I think this is such a small issue overall that you should not worry about a slight increase in image sizes damaging your SEO (assuming everything else is in place).
I would ask myself the questions:
- Is this better for my site users?
- does the seriously impact load times (and therefore usability / user experience)?
If you believe it creates a better experience and does not impact loading times in a meaningful way then go for it and don't worry about a likely negligible impact on loading times.
A few things I would do:
- test average loading times with a tool like pingdom: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
- replace your images and test again
- look at other areas where you can speed up loading times
- make sure your hosting does not suck
For reference there was a post here a while back re the whole loading times / SEO angle that determined it was time to first byte (response time) rather than total loading time that had the impact - this would make total loading time academic from a pure SEO perspective but... it's really not about SEO, it's about your site users and whether this makes things better (improved images) or worse (slow loading) for them.
Seriously - don't worry about this small change too much from an SEO perspective. Use it as an excuse to improve loading time as that is a good exercise for lots of reasons but go with what is right for your users.
Hope that helps
MarcusRef
http://moz.com/blog/how-website-speed-actually-impacts-search-rankinghttp://moz.com/blog/improving-search-rank-by-optimizing-your-time-to-first-byte
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Image Search - Is there a way to influence the related icons at the top of the image search results?
Google recently added related icons at the top of the image search results page. Some of the icons may be unrelated to the search. Are there any best practices to influence what is positioned in the related image icons section? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaredBroussard1 -
Google Indexing Request - Typical Time to Complete?
In Google Search Console, when you request the (re) indexing of a fetched page, what's the average amount of time it takes to re-index and does it vary that much from site to site or are manual re-index request put in a queue and served on a first come - first serve basis despite the site characteristics like domain/page authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO18050 -
Lazy Loading of products on an E-Commerce Website - Options Needed
Hi Moz Fans. We are in the process of re-designing our product pages and we need to improve the page load speed. Our developers have suggested that we load the associated products on the page using Lazy Loading, While I understand this will certainly have a positive impact on the page load speed I am concerned on the SEO impact. We can have upwards of 50 associated products on a page so need a solution. So far I have found the following solution online which uses Lazy Loading and Escaped Fragments - The concern here is from serving an alternate version to search engines. The solution was developed by Google not only for lazy loading, but for indexing AJAX contents in general.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JBGlobalSEO
Here's the official page: Making AJAX Applications Crawlable. The documentation is simple and clear, but in a few words the solution is to use slightly modified URL fragments.
A fragment is the last part of the URL, prefixed by #. Fragments are not propagated to the server, they are used only on the client side to tell the browser to show something, usually to move to a in-page bookmark.
If instead of using # as the prefix, you use #!, this instructs Google to ask the server for a special version of your page using an ugly URL. When the server receives this ugly request, it's your responsibility to send back a static version of the page that renders an HTML snapshot (the not indexed image in our case). It seems complicated but it is not, let's use our gallery as an example. Every gallery thumbnail has to have an hyperlink like: http://www.idea-r.it/...#!blogimage=<image-number></image-number> When the crawler will find this markup will change it to
http://www.idea-r.it/...?_escaped_fragment_=blogimage=<image-number></image-number> Let's take a look at what you have to answer on the server side to provide a valid HTML snapshot.
My implementation uses ASP.NET, but any server technology will be good. var fragment = Request.QueryString[``"_escaped_fragment_"``];``if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(fragment))``{``var escapedParams = fragment.Split(``new``[] { ``'=' });``if (escapedParams.Length == 2)``{``var imageToDisplay = escapedParams[1];``// Render the page with the gallery showing ``// the requested image (statically!)``...``}``} What's rendered is an HTML snapshot, that is a static version of the gallery already positioned on the requested image (server side).
To make it perfect we have to give the user a chance to bookmark the current gallery image.
90% comes for free, we have only to parse the fragment on the client side and show the requested image if (window.location.hash)``{``// NOTE: remove initial #``var fragmentParams = window.location.hash.substring(1).split(``'='``);``var imageToDisplay = fragmentParams[1]``// Render the page with the gallery showing the requested image (dynamically!)``...``} The other option would be to look at a recommendation engine to show a small selection of related products instead. This would cut the total number of related products down. The concern with this one is we are removing a massive chunk of content from he existing pages, Some is not the most relevant but its content. Any advice and discussion welcome 🙂0 -
Is it worth creating an Image Sitemap?
We've just installed the server side script 'XML Sitemaps' on our eCommerce site. The script gives us the option of (easily) creating an image sitemap but I'm debating whether there is any reason for us to do so. We sell printer cartridges and so all the images will be pretty dry (brand name printer cartridge in front of a box being a favourite). I can't see any potential customers to search for an image as a route in to the site and Google appears to be picking up our images on it's own accord so wonder if we'll just be crawling the site and submitting this information for no real reason. From a quality perspective would Google give us any kind of kudos for providing an Image Sitemap? Would it potentially increase their crawl frequency or, indeed, reduce the load on our servers as they wouldn't have to crawl for all the images themselves?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisHolgate
I can't stress how little of a hardship it will be to create one of these automatically daily but am wondering if, like Meta Keywords, there is any benefit to doing so?1 -
Location.href vs href?
I just got off a Google Hangout with John Mueller and was left a little confused about his response to my question. If I have an internal link in a div like widgetwill it have the same SEO impact as widget John said that as you are unable to attribute a nofollow in an onclick event it would be treated as a naked link and would not pass pagerank but still be crawled. Can anyone confirm that I understood it correctly? If so should all my links that have such an onclickevent also have an html ahref in the too? Such as widget Many times it is more useful for the customer to click on any area of a large div and not just the link to get to the destination intended? Clarification on this subject would be very useful, there is nothing easily found online to confirm this. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gazzerman10 -
Why is Google Displaying this image in the search results?
Hi i'm looking at advice on how to remove or change a particular image Google is displaying in the search results. I have attached a screenshot. From the first look of it, i assumed the image would be related and be on the dealers Google+ Local Page: https://plus.google.com/118099386834104087122/about?hl=en But there are no photos. The image seems to be coming from the website. Is there a way to stop Google from displaying this image or making them display a totally different image. Thanks, Chris XzfsnUy.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mattcarter080 -
Should I use both Google and Bing's Webmaster Tools at the same time?
Hi All, Up till now I've been registered only to Google WMT. Do you recommend using at the same time Bing's WMT? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Factors that affect Google.com vs .ca
Though my company is based in Canada, we have a .com URL, we're hosted on servers in the U.S., and most of our customers are in the U.S. Our marketing efforts are focused on the U.S. Heck, we even drop the "u" in "colour" and "favour"! 🙂 Nonetheless we rank very well in Google.ca, and rather poorly on Google.com. One hypothesis is that we have more backlinks from .ca domains than .com, but I don't believe that to be true. For sure, the highest quality links we have come from .coms like NYTimes.com. Any suggestions on how we can improve the .com rankings, other than keeping on with the link building?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobM4161
