Google has just introduced 2 new services that will help make the web faster for their clients. One of them is a tool for webmasters to monitor their website’s speed and the other is a public DNS service.
The first of these features, called ‘Site Performance’ is available through Google Webmaster Tools. It provides information to website owners about the speed of their site and will also offer some suggestions that can help to make the site load faster.
In the past too, Google has offered advice on how webmasters can help make their pages load faster, through several articles on best practices and via posts on discussion forums.
Through Site Performance, users will be able to find out how fast their pages load, and how their site is faring compared to other sites over a period of time. These performance charts and tables will, however, only be available to sites that have sufficient traffic to collect enough data for such details.
Individual users may, of course see a site at a faster or slower pace than the average depending on their location and network.
The other feature introduced is called ‘Google Public DNS’.
DNS, which is short for Domain Name System, is an essential part of the Web that converts domain names into unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers.
While using the Internet, users often access DNS several times without even being aware of it, as the service is usually automatically handled by the Internet Service Provider. However, when multiple DNS lookups are required together, the service can be slowed down considerably.
Google’s Public DNS hopes to be able to solve this problem and make the surfing experience faster, safer and more reliable for users.
Google’s recent emphasis on speeding up the Internet accompanies hints dropped by Google representative, Matt Cutts, about the importance site speed might play in ranking considerations in the future.
This makes perfect sense, in general, because it is a known fact that faster sites lead to better user retention and activity, thus leading to higher revenues. However, companies that don’t have the money to invest in top-notch infrastructure could lose out against big businesses that have the money to invest in dedicated server stacks and advanced Web architecture.
Principles that Cutts mentioned back in 2006 are more likely to still apply: So long as websites load within an acceptable time frame, which is determined by Google, it is unlikely that the site will be disadvantaged for loading a few milliseconds slower than its competitors.
