There is an interesting report that was released by Pingdom.com that analyzes the front page load size of the top 100 blogs that make up the Technorati Top 100. Individual blogs were not picked on within this report rather, the blogs were grouped as a whole to present a general overview of various data points.
According to the analysis, the total average size of the front page was 934 KB. Out of the top 100 blogs, at least one of them reaches a front page load size close to 6 MB! However, 93% of the blogs were below 2 MB in size. Not surprisingly, images were the main culprit for the large load sizes. Scripts along with HTML code came in at a distant second and third place respectively.
Average number of images per blog came out to be 63. In the report, there is one blog which has 201-225 images on their front page while a different blog has 251-275 images per page. I’m pretty interested in figuring out which blog on the Technorati 100 has over 200 images on their front page. That is a nightmare even for those who have broadband connections. (What do you say we try and figure out which blogs these are? If you find the culprits, post them in the comments!)
The report goes on to showcase the number of scripts per page, a chart describing how much time it would take to download a 1 MB front page with various connection speeds, tips as well as tricks to optimize your blog and more.
I’d like to say that I am surprised by the results of the analysis but I’m not. The Technorati Top 100 caters to an audience which has broadband connections. These sites contain a ton of content where video, audio, and large images are heavily used. Although there are many things a blog owner can do to make a small footprint, at what point does catering to the dial-up crowd become a lost cause? After reading this report, will you be making any changes to your blog to give it a smaller footprint on the web?
4 thoughts on “Popular Blogs No Match For Dial-Up”
Ahh, the times have certainly changed haven’t they?
I’ve noticed that some sites seem bloated, but for the average to be close to 1MB is amazing. Back in the 90’s, in the heyday of AOL, we tried to keep front pages to under 100k, including the images.
HAH, when I was reading the report about images and what have you, all I could think about was the top 100 blogs having about 10-12 125X125 banner ads on their sidebar. This would be on top of any Google advertising or script based advertising they had. Tell you what, using the Ad Block Plus FireFox extension sure does make me feel like I have a broadband connection again.
Don’t you hate those sites that take forever to load only to find out its because their major ad network they are connected to has a problem?
Jeff – I’m an infrequent commentor but I have to weigh in on this one.
First of all, thanks for bringing this report to our attention. I hadn’t seen it, but will track it down. I have to say I’m not surprised. I read most of my blogs through an RSS reader, but click through often to the actual sites for a variety of reasons. A lot of the blogs, especially larger blogs with multiple sponsors, are so overloaded with ads, images, and links, sometimes you can barely find the post!
In particular, I have actually stopped reading LifeHack. No matter if I was at work or at home (both locations with high speed connections), the site would take so long to load I would think my computer froze. Not a good thing to do to your “customers”. Especially ironic when you are a blog supposedly dedicated to making your reader’s lives easier!
I fully support bloggers making money off their sites. I fully support bloggers making a LOT of money off their sites. I just get the sense that while it’s easy to add “just one more” sponsor’s image to your blog, nobody every goes back and takes a look at their site for usability or readability concerns.
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