Do you know how fast (or slow) your site is?

Look, we’ve all been there. We do a search, see a link that we believe has the content that we’re looking for, and click. Then wait. Then wait some more. And if we’re really patient, we gave it a whole 5 seconds to load before we click the back button.

So how we can measure how fast our site is? Even if we used a stopwatch, which won’t really work anyway (more on that later), who wants to time each page on the site? Also, the reason why you can’t really use a stopwatch is because your computer has likely cached all the slow loading items already. So using your machine won’t be indicative of what others who haven’t there before end up experiencing.

You DO want to know how fast your site is, right?

Use this site timer

So where do I go to time my sites? I head over to Pingdom; tools.pingdom.com to be exact. It’s fast, free, and useful.

I’m not affiliated with Pingdom Tools. I just love the service that they provide. Head over there and give it a try. Enter your URL and you’ll get a detailed report on how long it took for each element of that page to load.

Under 1 second is incredible but many pages’ initial load will fall between 1 to 3 seconds. Anything more than that and you’ll want to correct a few things. As for subparts, such as ads or other images, though not ideal you can get away with 5-8 seconds for them to load as long as your main content is already up. I’ll provide an article on that another time.

Free Blog Help’s home page’s initial load time is at 1.2 seconds with most of the remaining parts taking from 2.5 to 5.5 seconds. I’d love to see what your home pages are so post yours!

Related Posts on Free Blog Help

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Tags: usability

This entry was posted on 2010/06/24, 12:01 am and is filed under Establishing design and usability, Leveraging tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

60 Comments

At 2010.06.25 08:05, Washington dc medical malpractice said:

I will use this tool. i think it will help me alot.
Thanks

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At 2010.06.25 11:50, Joe Boyle said:

My site flunked the speed test… lol…

My content loaded fast, it’s just all the extra Ajax and other code + images that held it down. It was more of what the browser sees that took more time, not what we see. Great find and post!

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- At 2011.09.22 02:29, chexiyi said:
  
  Pingdom definitely does a great job of providing accurate results in a blink of an eye!
  
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At 2010.06.25 12:43, Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing said:

OK I’m slow and don’t get this at all, lol. Can you read this for me.

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/?url=http://www.dennisedell.com//&id=2506811
Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing’s last post…Blog Network Almost Ready to Rise – Multiple Posts Coming Here.

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- At 2010.06.25 23:05, Gabe Young said:
  
  Your entire page is actually very fast with the exception of the Colorscheme2 directory. Everything else fully loaded in less than 5 seconds but it seems like the items in the aforementioned folder has trouble connecting. It pushes the official load time to about 13 seconds.
  
  What’s in that folder?
  
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  - At 2010.06.26 17:30, Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing said:
    
    No clue. lol
    Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing’s last post…Would You Like a PRIVATE Community
    
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At 2010.06.25 19:32, Tweets that mention Do you know how fast (or slow) your site is? | Free Blog Help -- Topsy.com said:

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Peter McFarlane, LittleatonBlog. LittleatonBlog said: Do you know how fast (or slow) your site is? http://bte.tc/cpk9 #RTW [...]

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At 2010.06.26 16:59, Eric said:

I’ll definitely have to check this out and do a follow up post on my blog. This is good to know because it could be the cost of visitors coming back or not.

Thanks for the tip!
Eric’s last post…Get To Know Me Better: Ask Me Any 2 Questions You Want

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- At 2010.06.26 21:33, Gabe Young said:
  
  I know! The bad part is that it’s very tough to measure visitors leaving and not coming back. Sure, we can look at bounce rates and uniques but at the end of the day, there’s no real great way to track this sort of thing.
  
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At 2010.06.27 04:54, Certification Master said:

thank God my site is working fine … btw good tool
Certification Master’s last post…Cisco Career Certifications

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At 2010.06.27 06:24, kaiserthesage said:

mine’s 2 seconds. it’s a great tool, seeing as it also tracks other pages of the site. you may also want to try SEO site Checkup dot com (similar to pingdom), they also provide a comprehensive checkup for sites and they also include suggestions that you can do to further optimize a page.
kaiserthesage’s last post…How Experimental Music Can Change Your Way of Life

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At 2010.06.27 16:02, Brad said:

2.8 to 5s loading time. Paypal ssl negotiating and wordpress.com dns are biggest causes. Not bad though.
Brad’s last post…Gmail can now view doc attachments

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At 2010.06.27 17:12, Mark Johnson said:

This is a handy tool, I’ve just tested mine at 2.1 secs, never really tested my blog before, so I’m pretty happy with that

I think there are some mis-conceptions around load time though. I worry that sometimes, newbies start thinking that every split second counts, especially since Google acknowledged that speed is now going to be part of it’s algorythm.

As a rule, I think that as long as your load time isn’t too long as to be a problem then you are good to go. I like the 5 second mark though, I think that is a good target to aim for. If your site is loading in 3 or 4 secs that is great, but I do wonder if some people might go all out to get it down to 2 or 3 secs and end up making their site not actually as good…

Just a thought. Great post though, I’m definitely going to book mark that tool. It is good to check every now and then.
Mark Johnson’s last post…Has Keyword Elite been knocked from it’s podium

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At 2010.06.28 05:56, sevenjeans said:

It’s amazing.
sevenjeans’s last post…Just Cavalli Jeans Men-3

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At 2010.06.28 21:14, Eseotips said:

Mysite load faster than freebloghelp :d.
i usually check speed my site
Eseotips’s last post…Tips for SEO Content Writing

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At 2010.06.29 14:38, Suggest link said:

Thank you for this tip, I didn’t know obout tools.pingdom.com , the problem is I used it and it shows the website loads in 4,9 seconds but if I access the website it takes not even a second to load, I don’t know why it shows like that… anyways I’ll try make some changes and make it faster to load..

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At 2010.07.08 19:25, Tim @ small space heater said:

This is very interesting information. I like that it is free. I have not had a problem, yet, but I do not load alot of graphics on my sites. If, I do, I will like knowing about this.

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At 2010.07.10 05:34, Rakesh Solanki said:

My site load in 1.0 seconds, is it perfect?
Rakesh Solanki’s last post…How to Use StumbleUpon A Basic Guide To Beginners

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At 2010.07.10 23:10, Judy @ all american pressure cooker said:

I did not know that this was important until now. I will check this out.

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At 2010.07.11 22:34, Vietnam software outsourcing said:

It takes 2.2s to load my website’s homepage. Is it good enough? But, do you know the number of Seconds that Google search engine will use as a factor to decide that one site is slow or fast in loading?
Vietnam software outsourcing’s last post…Response cached until Tue 13 @ 3:18 GMT (Refreshes in 23.78 Hours)

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At 2010.07.15 22:00, Hieu Martin said:

Free Blog Help’s home page’s load time 1.2 seconds. your site very fast
Hieu Martin’s last post…How to Check Blog Speed

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At 2010.07.18 02:57, Trabalho em casa said:

I have no idea about the speed of my site, but i think is good.

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At 2010.07.18 10:59, Hieu Martin said:

My site load time about 1-3s that good right
Hieu Martin’s last post…Tips for Writing Effective News-y Posts

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At 2010.07.29 03:54, internet marketing firm said:

my website response time is 3.2 seconds i think i am out of good.

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At 2010.08.03 14:13, kishan said:

This is very useful and good information given here. Thanks.

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At 2010.08.10 11:33, nemie at bonsai said:

this is the first time that I tried it.. It’s nice to know that there is a site to know the speed of a certain website.. Like your post:)

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At 2010.08.20 05:23, business productivity software said:

Great! its so nice and i really like that thank you for sharing this.

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At 2010.08.21 05:14, Paris Accommodation said:

Great tool. It’s good to know how fast our site is. If it’s too slow, we can find the way to solve this. I will try it. Many thanks for post.
Paris Accommodation’s last post…Paris Apartment in Le Marais – Georges Pompidou

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At 2010.10.07 11:47, Jason @ How to make lots of money fast said:

Now that Google actually apply this parameter as a ranking factor to your site – I guess it’s quite important nowadays. Thanks for making me even more aware of this.

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At 2010.10.14 10:25, Logosupermarket said:

I just got 2.2 seconds for our home page which I am pretty happy with considering it has a few animated logos rotating and quite a bit of content.

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At 2010.10.23 02:48, best wall mounts said:

My site loading time is 1 seconds so site slow or fast

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- At 2010.11.09 04:37, Catalin said:
  
  1 second is okay is that the total loading time though?
  Catalin’s last post…Optimizing and organizing your CSS code
  
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At 2010.10.23 03:01, Carpet Cleaning NY said:

Pingdom is good tool for checking time for site thanks

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At 2010.10.27 08:08, Corporate Entertainer said:

I think Pingdom is best tool for checking speed for site.

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At 2010.10.27 17:10, bikram said:

that tool said my site it took 3.6 s to load I think is Ok..no to fast but still Ok.
bikram’s last post…Acupuncture for Weight Loss

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At 2010.12.10 20:02, ryan said:

I know how fast my website is…if only it was that way all the time…

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At 2011.02.14 06:55, Graphic Logo Design said:

nice blog and thanks for this useful information:-)

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At 2011.04.08 02:34, Francis@Eurocasino said:

Pingdom.com is a nice tool to test the loading time of your website. I tested mine and it was 5.1 seconds but on opening the home page it sounds to open less than the time indicated by the pingdom.com. Maybe…….

In SEO, the loading time is one of the factors big ‘G’ has attached so much importance to. I do not to know if the test is ok or not.

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At 2011.06.18 01:39, discount chanel handbag said:

This is generally a wonderful website i should say,I enjoyed reading your articles.

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At 2011.07.12 02:04, High End Home Builders said:

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At 2011.07.12 02:05, Scottsdale Custom Home Builders said:

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Scottsdale Custom Home Builders’s last post…gasoline rain by moondogg

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At 2011.07.15 20:14, Importar da China said:

I was reading about and saw that speed is very important to SEO, isnt it?

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At 2011.07.22 05:24, san antonio dentists said:

If you want to increase your site then you have to know some tips which are available in many internet site.I can also help you.

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At 2011.10.23 07:32, Web Hosting said:

Thanks for the tool, to be honest, this is my first time am learning about pingdom

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At 2011.10.23 17:13, Funny Text said:

This is a tool that web hosting companies should have in their web sites if they plan to be genuine to their clients.

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At 2011.10.27 15:55, Jewelry Displays said:

I have searched for such a tool for many years and I was even convinced such tools don’t exist; today I will fire my web host.

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At 2011.11.04 10:44, Medence said:

When I first checked my site loading speed I was unsatisfied. The biggest problem was that host’s server was extremly slow.
Now I have other provider and faster templates.
Medence’s last post…Kreatív ötletek medence kialakításához szűk helyen

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