Find Out which Website Loads Faster

Martin Brinkmann
Jul 16, 2010
Updated • Dec 11, 2012
Development
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Site speed has been added as a ranking factor by Google some time ago. Webmasters since then have started optimizing their websites' page loading times. Some of the optimizations done included reducing the number of elements loaded when people visit the site, optimizing media elements, minifying CSS and JavaScript, and using web caching technologies to reduce the dynamic elements loaded on page loads.

Tools have been created to test the page loading time of a website, for instance Yslow or Google Page Speed which both show in detail the loading time and the elements that are responsible for it.

These tools are also used by webmasters to test the loading speed of related website. Those times give the webmaster a good indication if more optimization needs to be done. If a web page loads at least as fast as the fastest competing website then it is usually not necessary to optimize further, if it is slower there might be still room for improvement.

Which Loads Faster is an online service that compares the page load time of two websites by racing them against each other.

which loads faster
which loads faster

The website offers a few preset speed comparisons and the option to create a custom comparison.

To race two pages, a user needs to add two page urls into the form at the top and click the go button. Which Loads Faster will instantly start loading and displaying the websites in two columns on the same page.

Page loading times of both websites are displayed in milliseconds, and the faster one is indicated with an arrow and a percentage value that indicates how much faster it is than the other web page.

The Race link at the top navigation offers another interesting variant. Here it is possible to add up multiple urls to each side to see which loads faster than the other. This could be an interesting option to compare the homepage and several subpages of websites with each other.

The settings contain an option to switch the page loading mode from parallel to serial, helpful if the two sides may interfere with each other.

Which Loads Faster is a free online service that can be very beneficial to webmasters. Additional information about the page loading times would be helpful, for instance a display of the page elements and their loading times or the hardware and software that is powering the different sites. (via To The PC)

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Comments

  1. Tyron said on October 5, 2010 at 9:56 am
    Reply

    I just compared two of my sites and realize my main site is slower than my other site..
    May be because of lots of scripts I’m using…
    One of the major reason for slowdown is because I was using Facebook recommendation social widget and after I removed it and checked with Pingdom my site become 0.8 sec faster..
    Thanks for letting us know about this useful tool…

  2. Martin said on July 16, 2010 at 9:07 pm
    Reply

    Rarst, I think it is great that it is client side, as it means the loading is nearer to real values, and includes all elements on a page. Bots would probably skip stuff like JavaScript completely.

    The main culprit at Ghacks are the ads, if those are removed the site would be blazingly fast. Unfortunately though I cannot remove them at this time. Still waiting for a big company to come by and buy the site, let me continue write for it, and remove most of the ads on the site.

    Not that this is going to happen anytime soon, though ;)

  3. Rarst said on July 16, 2010 at 8:13 pm
    Reply

    Looks nice, but since it is entirely client-side results are greatly influenced by specific browser, cache settings, etc.

    Also for some reason ghacks beats me in speed every time (hey, it’s good to even come close to dedicated server of your caliber with my shared hosting :) but average shows opposite result.

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