Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. High resolution (retina) images vs load time

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    High resolution (retina) images vs load time

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    6
    3080
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • deelo555
      deelo555 last edited by

      I have an ecommerce website and have a product slider with 3 images.

      Currently, I serve them at the native size when viewed on a desktop browser (374x374).

      I would like to serve them using retina image quality (748px).

      However how will this affect my ranking due to load time?

      Does Google take into account image load times even though these are done asynchronously? Also as its a slider, its only the first image which needs to load. Do the other images contribute at all to the page load time?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • deelo555
        deelo555 @mathamatix last edited by

        "Large pictures tend to be bad for user experience."

        I disagree. I think what you mean is slower loading is bad for the user experience. Higher quality pictures are better for the user experience.

        I've been looking into deferring loading of the additional slider images. That should definitely improve load time as all the bandwidth can be used to download the first slider image.

        Also the first slider image if you use a progressive format should show something quickly and then improve over time.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • mathamatix
          mathamatix Subscriber @deelo555 last edited by

          You also have to keep in mind that users will access your site from mobile devices and that the larger the page the longer it takes to load fully. You may lose some people during the time it takes to load the page. My website used to have a slider with three images. i removed the slider and replaced it with one static image. Large pictures tend to be bad for user experience.

          deelo555 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Marcus_Miller
            Marcus_Miller last edited by

            Hey Dwayne

            They are big images but from experience I have never seen a meaningful impact from these kind of changes (in around 15 years). Maybe work on optimising the images themselves as best as possible to bring the overall size down as much as possible. Sure, if your site is a slow loading nightmare and this is just the final straw then it may be an issue but by the sounds of it you are already taking that into consideration and your site is well hosted and performs better than most of everything else out there.

            But, as ever in this game, my advice would be to be aware of possible implications, weigh up the pros and cons and then test extensively. If you see an impact in your loading time and search results (and more importantly in user interaction, bounce etc) after changing this one factor then you know you can roll it back.

            Hope that helps

            Marcus

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • deelo555
              deelo555 @Marcus_Miller last edited by

              Hi,

              Its not that small a change...the size of each image will quadruple from around 10kb to 40kb. As there are three images thats 90kb more data. Which is around 20% of the total page size.

              That's interesting what you mention about the first byte load time. I would have thought that was overly simple and would definitely have assumed Google would actually be more concerned with how long it takes for the page "to load" (e.g. using their pagespeed metrics).

              I've optimized my site extensively and have pagespeed score of 95% and I use the amazon AWS servers.

              I agree with your idea about doing what's right for my users. But if Google includes the image load time then my site will rank poorly and then I won't have any users!

              In summary, I think what this question really comes down to is how does Google calculate page load times and does this include image load time and does it include load time for all images (even ones which aren't being rendered in the slider).

              Thanks,

              Dwayne

              mathamatix 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Marcus_Miller
                Marcus_Miller last edited by

                Hey

                I think this is such a small issue overall that you should not worry about a slight increase in image sizes damaging your SEO (assuming everything else is in place).

                I would ask myself the questions:

                • Is this better for my site users?
                • does the seriously impact load times (and therefore usability / user experience)?

                If you believe it creates a better experience and does not impact loading times in a meaningful way then go for it and don't worry about a likely negligible impact on loading times.

                A few things I would do:

                • test average loading times with a tool like pingdom: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
                • replace your images and test again
                • look at other areas where you can speed up loading times
                • make sure your hosting does not suck

                For reference there was a post here a while back re the whole loading times / SEO angle that determined it was time to first byte (response time) rather than total loading time that had the impact - this would make total loading time academic from a pure SEO perspective but... it's really not about SEO, it's about your site users and whether this makes things better (improved images) or worse (slow loading) for them.

                Seriously - don't worry about this small change too much from an SEO perspective. Use it as an excuse to improve loading time as that is a good exercise for lots of reasons but go with what is right for your users.

                Hope that helps
                Marcus

                Ref
                http://moz.com/blog/how-website-speed-actually-impacts-search-ranking

                http://moz.com/blog/improving-search-rank-by-optimizing-your-time-to-first-byte

                deelo555 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • JaredBroussard

                  Google Image Search - Is there a way to influence the related icons at the top of the image search results?

                  Google recently added related icons at the top of the image search results page. Some of the icons may be unrelated to the search. Are there any best practices to influence what is positioned in the related image icons section?  Thank you.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaredBroussard
                  1
                • SimpleSearch

                  Absolute vs. Relative Canonical Links

                  Hi Moz Community, I have a client using relative links for their canonicals (vs. absolute) Google appears to be following this just fine, but bing, etc. are still sending organic traffic to the non-canonical links. It's a drupal setup. Anyone have advice?  Should I recommend that all canonical links be absolute?  They are strapped for resources, so this would be a PITA if it won't make a difference. Thanks

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SimpleSearch
                  1
                • Shawn124

                  Switching from Http to Https, but what about images and image link juice?

                  Hi Ya'll. I'm transitioning our http version website to https.  Important question: Do images have to have 301 redirects? If so, how and where? Please send me a link or explain best practices. Best, Shawn

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn124
                  1
                • JBGlobalSEO

                  Lazy Loading of products on an E-Commerce Website - Options Needed

                  Hi Moz Fans. We are in the process of re-designing our product pages and we need to improve the page load speed. Our developers have suggested that we load the associated products on the page using Lazy Loading, While I understand this will certainly have a positive impact on the page load speed I am concerned on the SEO impact. We can have upwards of 50 associated products on a page so need a solution. So far I have found the following solution online which uses Lazy Loading and Escaped Fragments - The concern here is from serving an alternate version to search engines. The solution was developed by Google not only for lazy loading, but for indexing AJAX contents in general.
                  Here's the official page: Making AJAX Applications Crawlable. The documentation is simple and clear, but in a few words the solution is to use slightly modified URL fragments.
                  A fragment is the last part of the URL, prefixed by #. Fragments are not propagated to the server, they are used only on the client side to tell the browser to show something, usually to move to a in-page bookmark.
                  If instead of using # as the prefix, you use #!, this instructs Google to ask the server for a special version of your page using an ugly URL. When the server receives this ugly request, it's your responsibility to send back a static version of the page that renders an HTML snapshot (the not indexed image in our case). It seems complicated but it is not, let's use our gallery as an example. Every gallery thumbnail has to have an hyperlink like:  http://www.idea-r.it/...#!blogimage=<image-number></image-number> When the crawler will find this markup will change it to
                  http://www.idea-r.it/...?_escaped_fragment_=blogimage=<image-number></image-number> Let's take a look at what you have to answer on the server side to provide a valid HTML snapshot.
                  My implementation uses ASP.NET, but any server technology will be good. var fragment = Request.QueryString[``"_escaped_fragment_"``];``if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(fragment))``{``var escapedParams = fragment.Split(``new``[] { ``'=' });``if (escapedParams.Length == 2)``{``var imageToDisplay = escapedParams[1];``// Render the page with the gallery showing ``// the requested image (statically!)``...``}``} What's rendered is an HTML snapshot, that is a static version of the gallery already positioned on the requested image (server side).
                  To make it perfect we have to give the user a chance to bookmark the current gallery image.
                  90% comes for free, we have only to parse the fragment on the client side and show the requested image if (window.location.hash)``{``// NOTE: remove initial #``var fragmentParams = window.location.hash.substring(1).split(``'='``);``var imageToDisplay = fragmentParams[1]``// Render the page with the gallery showing the requested image (dynamically!)``...``} The other option would be to look at a recommendation engine to show a small selection of related products instead. This would cut the total number of related products down. The concern with this one is we are removing a massive chunk of content from he existing pages, Some is not the most relevant but its content. Any advice and discussion welcome 🙂

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JBGlobalSEO
                  0
                • nchachula

                  Description vs meta description

                  I have an e-commerce website and am trying to create product category pages. I am under the impression that Description is the text that would appear under the title on a google search and I believe the meta description is just what google reads? Is having BOTH important or just description? Is it ok to duplicate the description for the meta description? I know its not good to duplicate descriptions on other products and pages.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nchachula
                  0
                • eugene_bgb

                  Hreflang in vs. sitemap?

                  Hi all, I decided to identify alternate language pages of my site via sitemap to save our development team some time.  I also like the idea of having leaner markup. However, my site has many alternate language and country page variations, so after creating a sitemap that includes mostly tier 1 and tier 2 level URLs, i now have a sitemap file that's 17mb.  I did a couple google searches to see is sitemap file size can ever be an issue and found a discussion or two that suggested keeping the size small and a really old article that recommended keeping it < 10mb. Does the sitemap file size matter?  GWT has verified the sitemap and appears to be indexing the URLs fine. Are there any particular benefits to specifying alternate versions of a URL in vs. sitemap? Thanks, -Eugene

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eugene_bgb
                  0
                • kinimod

                  Microsites: Subdomain vs own domains

                  I am working on a travel site about a specific region, which includes information about lots of different topics, such as weddings, surfing etc. I was wondering whether its a good idea to register domains for each topic since it would enable me to build backlinks. I would basically keep the design more or less the same and implement a nofollow navigation bar to each microsite. e.g.
                  weddingsbarcelona.com
                  surfingbarcelona.com or should I rather go with one domain and subfolders: barcelona.com/weddings
                  barcelona.com/surfing I guess the second option is how I would usually do it but I just wanted to see what are the pros/cons of both options. Many thanks!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kinimod
                  0
                • Mattcarter08

                  Why is Google Displaying this image in the search results?

                  Hi i'm looking at advice on how to remove or change a particular image Google is displaying in the search results. I have attached a screenshot. From the first look of it, i assumed the image would be related and be on the dealers Google+ Local Page: https://plus.google.com/118099386834104087122/about?hl=en But there are no photos. The image seems to be coming from the website. Is there a way to stop Google from displaying this image or making them display a totally different image. Thanks, Chris XzfsnUy.png

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mattcarter08
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.