Comments on: Does Google Analytics make your pages slow?

By: Agreed with Nutrun. Removing Google Analytics removes speed penalty :: pz ::

Agreed with Nutrun. Removing Google Analytics removes speed penalty :: pz :: — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:30:02 +0000

[...] http://nutrun.com/weblog/does-google-analytics-make-your-pages-slow/ [...]

By: Get Rid of Google Analytics » resist - cleveland design

Get Rid of Google Analytics » resist - cleveland design — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:24:43 +0000

[...] The allure of free is hard to resist, I tried it myself a week before pitching it. The interface is nice, but not as rich (or as extensible) as Mint. The whole week Google Analytics was continually going down, causing my site to hang. Apparently, I’m not the only one fed up either. [...]

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 01:40:25 +0000

I’m sure the Google instructions used to say insert in the header- they must have recently changed this?
Tim http://bla.st/

By: Vladimir

Vladimir — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 15:49:55 +0000

Well I used at the starting of my project Google Analytics.
But as I wanted to have a really small site, the decision was made to kick it off.
It is 5,4 KB heavy.
So that is about 20 percent of the homepage.

Now I use shinystat.
I know it is not as great as Analytics, but therefore it is only 500Bytes small.

By: Blizz

Blizz — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 07:35:10 +0000

TBH I did 2 things, put it near the bottom of the page _and_ download the script itself to my server. I have code that checks once a week if an updated version is available. It’s probably not needed anymore, but when they first started with analytics, sometimes the server passing out the script couldn’t handle the load.

By: Erinc

Erinc — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 06:12:51 +0000

I do believe Google analytics can cause a very short delay. but, since the analytics script should be placed just before the end body tag, it shouldn’t delay the load of the layout that much.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:01:29 +0000

Zach, thanks for the tip. That seemed to help my sites. I didn’t run any benchmarks but the pages “seem” to load quicker.

By: Zach Smith

Zach Smith — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:25:47 +0000

Where did you have the google analytics code? If you had it at the top of your page then that was the problem. The documentation tells you to put it as close to the end (but before the ) as you can get it.

The reasoning is that when it gets to that script function call to register the hit to your site, it will stop all the other processing, thus slowing down your site. If its at the bottom, it will run after everything has been drawn.

By: Paul Ingles

Paul Ingles — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 20:00:36 +0000

I’ve used both Google Analytics and Mint (Shaun Inman’s PHP creation).

I have to say, I think Google gives way more information about what users actually visit (and how they visit). But, I find I use Mint more often – it just gives me a nice summary of bits. So, I can see my Feedburner stats, the number of visits, the searches people get referred to my site via. etc.

And although it’s not free (as in beer ;), it’s pretty reasonably priced. If you want to give it a go, it’s at http://www.haveamint.com.