does adding www to your links decrease load time?

by 9 replies
11
tested load times on a very basic site, here's the results:

stunningpromotions - com
Tested from Amsterdam, Netherlands on January 13 at 23:13:26
Page size
417.0kB
Load time
2.28s
Requests
33
Perf. grade
89/100
Your website is faster than 66% of all tested websites

www stunningpromotions - com
Tested from Dallas, Texas, USA on January 13 at 23:16:17
Page size
417.1kB
Load time
756ms
Requests
32
Perf. grade
92/100
Your website is faster than 94% of all tested websites

so when you put your link anywhere, make sure you add that www for faster load times
#main internet marketing discussion forum #adding #decrease #links #load #time #www
  • You realize that one of them tested from Dallas and another one was tested from the Netherlands, literally half way across the world from each other, right?

    This is the reason for the difference in load time.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • ah you might be right but when i look at the stats there is a staggering increase in time to redirect from without www to with www at the DNS and connect stage, the first two stages

    could it be that significant of a load time between two physical locations. since this is a very small load what would that imply for sites with much more content? i mean if i have a site that loads in 5 seconds from amsterdam will it load in 15 seconds from dallas...that's hard to believe

    thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Actually the distance between server and visitor matters a lot in terms of website speed, much more than the time needed to redirect a site from www to non www or vice versa.

      Why haven't you tested your website from same location?
      Also, your first test had 33 requests and your second had 32 requests.
  • Depends on how the redirect is performed - if you do it in DNS has no effect at all in load times.

    If you would use a HTML page with a JS redirect the difference would be huge.

    No sane person would do something else than do it either in DNS or htaccess actually.
  • [DELETED]
  • Try doing both tests from same location

    also, if your default is xx.com , then www.xx.com will take slightly longer because it will redirect to xx.com .. I think..
  • You were probably using Pingdom, make sure you're checking off the particular location box.

    You can also just try using gtmetrix.com
  • If you are setting any cookies this could cause cookies not to be read properly. It seems that there is a parent/child relationship when the www is used. The parent is without the www and when the www is used it is considered the child of the link without the www.

    I'm a software creator and found that when the www is used that the cookies are not set if the software has the domain as being used without the www or in the reverse.

    So if you get an affiliate link that has the www in it be sure to include it in your redirects.

    If the affiliate link does not have the www in it don't add the www in your redirects.

    I hope this has been helpful,
    Steve
  • awesome ya thanks for the awesome replys all!
    learning stuff I don't know about!
  • If you were using pingdom, you can choose the data center the test is being done at.

    Oh and it doesn't matter.
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