Google analytics, undoubtedly, is a great tool and add to that it is free.
If you wish to monitor traffic analyze visitor traffic and trend of your website then you will not have any better option than Google Analytics.
Now the million dollar question is does it slow down the page loading?
If you are having a basic html page with few images and some javascripts then you wouldn’t be bothering about the negative effect of Google Analytics at all.
E.g. SwamiSEO website is mostly consists of html, some images and a javascript (the slowest component) and I wouldn’t be bothering even if Google Analytics slows down the page loading a little bit.
On the contrary if we have a dynamic website (backend/database interaction) like SwamiLaptops which has a lots of images then we need to think over affects of GA on page loading.
Being a rational man I don’t take any predefined concepts so I’m going to do experiment to find out if Google Analytics really slows down the page loading or not.
Experiment 1 - SwamiSEO
Without Google Analytics code the front page loading time is about 0.41 seconds with the page size of about 17.09 kb
With Google Analytics code the page loading time remains almost same to 0.41 seconds and page size is 17.26 KB.
Conclusion: Google Analytics doesn’t not slow down the page loading to cause any concern.
Experiment 2 - SwamiLaptops
Without Google Analytics the front page loading time is about 1.12 seconds with the page size of about 80.14 kb
With Google Analytics code the front page loading time is about 1.12 seconds with the page size of about 80.34 kb
Conclusion: Google Analytics doesn’t not slow down the page loading to cause any concern.
Above tests are by no means 100% accurate and done in laboratory environment, but they do provide a first hand conclusion that Google Analytics doesn’t slow down pages considerably.
GA is a small Javascript which is executed every time a page is loaded. Byt its virtue it will obviously take some time to execute a Javascript but I would say that GA doesn’t slow downpage loading to cause any concern.
Google Analytics and High Traffic Websites
If you have got millions of visitors per day then you may see some slowing down of page loading as it is pure mathematics.
Trade off
It is all about trade off between a great tool and page loading. If you don’t have a high traffic website then you should not be bothering about page loading.
For high traffic websites you have no choice but to use GA. Any other tool will also employ some code to be inserted in each and every page of your website which will obviously slow down page loading a little bit.
Best practice for inserting Google Analytics Code
1) Insert Google Analytics Code just before </body> tag.
With this rest of page will render before executing GA code and users may not see any significant affect of slowness if any.
2) Use common page to insert Google Analytics code
The best place to add GA code is in footer files if you have any. If you are using php/asp or any similar languages then it is easy to create a a common footer.php file and add GA code.
Another way is to create a new file name it as google_analytics.php and include this in the footer file.
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