Is the TTFB for different locations and browsers irrelevant if you are self-hosting?
-
Please forgive my ignorance on this subject. I have little to no experience with the technical aspects of setting up and running a server.
Here is the scenario:
We are self-hosted on an Apache server. I have been on the warpath to improve page load speed since the beginning of the year. I have been on this warpath not so much for SEO, but for conversion rate optimization. I recently read the Moz Post "How Website Speed Actually Impacts Search Rankings" and was fascinated by the research regarding TTFB. I forwarded the post to my CEO, who promptly sent me back a contradictory post from Cloudflare on the same topic. Ily Grigorik published a post in Google+ that called Cloudflare's experiment "silly" and said that "TTFB absolutely does matter."
I proceeded to begin gathering information on our site's TTFB using data provided by http://webpagetest.org. I documented TTFB for every location and browser in an effort to show that we needed to improve. When I presented this info to my CEO (I am in-house) and IT Director, that both shook their heads and completely dismissed the data and said it was irrelevant because it was measuring something we couldn't control.
Ignorant as I am, it seems that Ilya Grigorik, Google's own Web Dev Advocate says it absolutely is something that can be controlled, or at least optimized if you know what you are doing.
Can any of you super smart Mozzers help me put the words together to express that TTFB from different locations and for different browsers is something worth paying attention to? Or, perhaps they are right, and it's information I should ignore?
Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions!
Dana
-
Yes, very helpful guys. I appreciate it!
-
Thanks Igal and hopefully you have some info to work with Dana!
-
Many thanks to both Vadim and Igal for such great information and also a really great thread on the subject. I really, really appreciate your answers.!
-
Honestly, I don't know. I don't think TTFB was ever comparatively tested - at least no to the best of my knowledge.
For security, these are some of the resources I can point to.
I understand that this is not the main issue
Still, I wanted to provide some factual context to my previous statements.
http://zeroscience.mk/files/wafreport2013.pdf http://ddos-protection-services-review.toptenreviews.com/ http://tonyonsecurity.com/2012/11/13/protecting-your-website-cloudflare-or-incapsula/
(This last one is interesting since Tony is a COO of Sucuri. Some would call his our competitor. I prefer 'colleague' )
-
security wise it seems both of you guys have stellar options. for me the issue is performance, caching for dynamic sites, CDN performance, and in this case TTFB response. I was not sure with your response do you have faster TTFB to CF?
Thanks
-
Hi Vadim
Thanks.
Yep, I work for Incapsula but no, we are not the said "Mod".As for CF comparison... Generally speaking, we are more business oriented and security focused. I know that our security offering is more comprehensive, especially because both WAFs were comparatively pen-tested on several occasions and we always came out as consistently (and significantly) better option.We also have addition security features - like 2FA support and backdoor shell protection - which CF simply doesn't offer and we do more in way of ddos mitigation, especially against smart application layer attacks which require security capabilities, besides network muscle.
Still, speed wise, I always considered us to be pretty much on the same level. However, until few days ago I never considered TTFB to be such core SEO factor, so maybe we have better performance there...
But again, to be fair, I`m only speculating - mostly based on the CF blog you've shared.
(if TTFB is considered un-important, it might also be under developed...)Might be an interesting thing to test and document.
-
Hi Igal,
Do you work for incapsula, you are mentioned as a Mod on the blog?
I have heard great things about incapsula from others, but in terms of TTFB is it better than cloudflare? If so, how so?
Also any other ways that it excels Cloudflare? any ways its inferior to Cloudflare in your opinion?
Thanks I am really looking for more info, as I had great results with Cloudflares features and offering, wondering if I should give Incapsula a run
Thanks
-
I absolutely agree with Vadim. (+1)
Google is the best source for Google facts. Everything else is just speculation.
And yes, generally speaking, the best answer is to use a CDN....
The reason is simple. CNDs proxy technology, which was designed to minimize "physical" distances between the site's content and browsers, directly influences TTFB.Being an in-house SEO for a CDN company I get a lot of questions about this from our support and clients. I have to admit, until recent Moz post, I wasn't aware of full implications of TTFB and considered it to be one of few page load speed related metrics. (http://moz.com/blog/how-website-speed-actually-impacts-search-ranking)
This post really helped me get a better grasp on things. Interestingly enough, few month ago one of our clients Guest Posted in our blog about speed improvement gained by our free plan. Among other things, he mentioned 70% improvement in TTFB (grade going from F to A)
(http://www.incapsula.com/the-incapsula-blog/item/718-what-incapsula-free-did-for-my-site)At the time I didn't give it much attention. Because, like many others, I was focusing on overall load speeds....
Now I can't help but feel that this was a missed opportunity.
This post could be even better with the added SEO angle...
If anyone here is interested in giving this a try and guest posting about it, I`ll be happy to provide all resources needed on our end. -
Yea this makes sense as others have said that Cloudflare is trying to say that TTFB is not the most important metric, and so they published this study, as it aids their business model.
I would do just that listen to Google dev vs Cloudflare. Also the way I think about it even if their studies are true, where for the overall benefit TTFB would have to increase if you are using some compression, you still need to work and decrease your TTFB either way, that is just intuition. I apologize if I made it seem that TTFB is to be ignored, because Cloudflare state's that quite boldly,
Again some things that affect TTFB:
- Move your website to a faster/better server (If an option)
- Use a CDN or something similar to reduce the load on the server (repeated requests to a server will increase the TTFB)
- Reduce the time the server spends processing the request for information (sent above) and more here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10938682/how-to-reduce-server-wait-time
-
Thanks Vadim. Yes, this Cloudflare post is exactly the one I was referencing in my question. As I mentioned, Ilya Gregorik posted a rebuttal to their experiment here: post in Google+
It seems to me that if a Google developer says TTFB absolutely does matter that this would take precedence over anything Cloudflare might say.
What do you think?
-
Databases? Optimize any database queries that are slow This should help: http://www.techfounder.net/2011/03/25/database-profiling-and-optimizing-your-database-the-generic-version/
Now before you pass anything over to the IT this issue is a heated one in some cases where you have people saying that TTFB is not might not be the key metric to go after, here is more food for thought:
http://blog.cloudflare.com/ttfb-time-to-first-byte-considered-meaningles
"At CloudFlare we make extensive use of nginx and while investigating TTFB came across a significant difference in TTFB from nginx when compression is or is not used. Gzip compression of web pages greatly reduces the time it takes a web page to download, but the compression itself has a cost. That cost causes TTFB to be greater even though the complete download is quicker."
-
Thanks Vadim. This is helpful. In the first article the author writes:
"The only thing that is controllable is the server you are on." He suggests optimizing the database. What specific & measurable directive might I give to our IT manager that would accomplish this goal?
The second post looks very helpful indeed. I am downloading Microsoft's VRTA right now. It's a bit technically over my head, but I get the concepts. This should be something I can pass on to IT...however, it seems the info could be a bit dated (it repeatedly references IE 7)...Is there anything additional that might be more current?
Thanks again!
-
Hi Dana,
Yes TTFB is something you can control with the type of server you use. And where that server is in relation to your visitors. You cannot control the browsers they use, but hear are some thoughts on possible optimizations:
Server side: http://createdevelop.blog.com/2010/10/12/how-to-reduce-time-to-first-byte/
Location (plus other suggestions): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd188562.aspx
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate content across different domains
Hi Guys, Looking for some advice regarding duplicate content across different domains. I have reviewed some previous Q&A on this topic e.g. https://moz.com/community/q/two-different-domains-exact-same-content but just want to confirm if I'm missing anything. Basically, we have a client which has 1 site (call this site A) which has solids rankings. They have decided to build a new site (site B), which contains 50% duplicate pages and content from site A. Our recommendation to them was to make the content on site B as unique as possible but they want to launch asap, so not enough time. They will eventually transfer over to unique content on the website but in the short-term, it will be duplicate content. John Mueller from Google has said several times that there is no duplicate content penalty. So assuming this is correct site A should be fine, no ranking losses. Any disagree with this? Assuming we don't want to leave this to chance or assume John Mueller is correct would the next best thing to do is setup rel canonical tags between site A and site B on the pages with duplicate content? Then once we have unique content ready, execute that content on the site and remove the canonical tags. Any suggestions or advice would be very much appreciated! Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Schema Markup for Multiple Locations
I am reaching out to see if I correctly set up Schema Markup on our website for multiple locations.Our company has HQ in Little Chute WI but we have 6 other office locations. We have a separate page for each office within our website. I inserted ProfessionalService Schema Markup, using GTM. I used the address of our HQ Little Chute office on all pages besides the 6 pages that have different office locations. I then individually set up unique ProfessionalService Schema Markup for the 6 locations with their unique location addresses. Did I do this correctly? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CharityHBS0 -
Some site's links look different on google search. For example Games.com › Flash games › Decoration games How can we do our url's like this?
For example Games.com › Flash games › Decoration games How can we do our url's like this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lutfigunduz0 -
One Website, Multiple Locations, One Blog?
There's definitely not going to be a "right" answer to this question, but I think it can lead to a great discussion. We are building a website for a client who has two locations, we are going to use a URL structure similar to this: www.Brand.com (this would be a landing page where users would select a location) www.Brand.com/Atlanta www.Brand.com/Boston However, we still want to focus on local SEO - so our deeper URL structure will be: www.Brand.com/Atlanta/Auto-Accident-Lawyer www.Brand.com/Atlanta/Motorcycle-Accident-Lawyer www.Brand.com/Boston/Auto-Accident-Lawyer www.Brand.com/Boston/Motorcycle-Accident-Lawyer The content on those pages will be unique and target local keywords. Each "version" of the website will have a navigation specific to that location. For example, once a user clicks into the Boston website, all of the navigation items will pertain to Boston. However, we run into an issue with the blog. Both locations will be using the same blog content, which ends up looking something like this: www.Brand.com/Atlanta/Blog/Blog-Article www.Brand.com/Boston/Blog/Blog-Article This obviously creates duplicate content. We could do something such as this: www.Brand.com/Blog/Blog-Article However, as noted above, each local version of the website has a separate navigation (this keeps a user in Boston on the Boston version of the website). So have a centralized blog is far from ideal unless navigations for both locations are included - which would allow users to return back to their local website. From my understanding, duplicate content doesn't necessarily "hurt" your SERPs, it simply keeps one of the duplicated pages from ranking. So the question comes down to this, is duplicate content a big enough issue to restructure a website to use a centralized blog?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McFaddenGavender0 -
Location.href vs href?
I just got off a Google Hangout with John Mueller and was left a little confused about his response to my question. If I have an internal link in a div like widgetwill it have the same SEO impact as widget John said that as you are unable to attribute a nofollow in an onclick event it would be treated as a naked link and would not pass pagerank but still be crawled. Can anyone confirm that I understood it correctly? If so should all my links that have such an onclickevent also have an html ahref in the too? Such as widget Many times it is more useful for the customer to click on any area of a large div and not just the link to get to the destination intended? Clarification on this subject would be very useful, there is nothing easily found online to confirm this. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gazzerman10 -
Keyword Self Cannibalization and E-Commerce
I run a Magento shop - let's imagine a situation where the category landing page, is about "Joe Bloggs Kettles" Then on that page, we have the products listed ; so we would have links to products pages - these links will be called something like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
Joe Bloggs Red Kettle
Joe Bloggs Yellow Kettle
Joe Bloggs Purple Kettle Can someone please tell me if this is ok or should we rework our strategy? Thanks0 -
Changing Hosting Companies - Site Downtime - Google Indexing Concern
We are getting ready to switch to a new hosting company. When we make the switchover, our sites will be offline for a couple of hours and in some cases perhaps as long as 12 hours while DNS is configured -- should we be worried about Google trying to index pages and finding them unavailable? Any fear of Google de-indexing pages. Our guess was that Google would not de-index anything after just a short period of not being able to find pages -- it would have to be over an extended period of time before GOOGLE or BING would de-index pages -- CORRECT? Just want to gut check this before pulling the trigger on switch over to new hosting company. We appreciate input on this and/or any other thoughts regarding the switch over to new hosting company that we may not have thought of. Thanks, Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720 -
Best way to host multiple sites for maximum seo
We have over 100 websites we built for clients that we currently host on 1 shared godaddy hosting account. They each have a link to us but since they are all under one shared account, we feel that we are not maximizing the inbound link potential. I've looked into c class hosting but found that either the ip's were flagged as spam, or they shared nameservers which defeats the purpose. I've also been told that since the c class ip's a hosting company gives to you are all owned by them, that also defeats the purpose. Anyone have any solutions besides opening 130 accounts with different hosting companies? Also, will it make any difference changing existing sites onto different hosts now or are they already tainted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seopet0