Added visitor tracking, and what it cost
Hypothesis, recorded before shipping
We cannot honestly claim to measure results without measuring visitors. Loading the tag only after the page is usable should give us the data without slowing anything down.
This site argues that other companies’ code is what makes websites slow. Then we added some. That is worth being straight about.
The reasoning: half of what Autopilot measures is whether visitors actually do anything once they arrive, and we cannot report that without counting them. So Google Analytics is now on the site.
What we did to keep it honest. The tag loads only after the page is finished and usable, so nothing on screen ever waits for it. Nothing is stored on your device unless you agree — if you decline, we get an anonymous count of the visit and nothing else. Advertising features are off.
The cost, published rather than buried: the code we send went from 2.2KB to 4.6KB. The speed figures on the proof page are measured after this change, not before it.
Result
Code sent to the browser went from 2.2KB to 4.6KB. Google's own tag loads afterwards, once the page is already usable, so nothing waits on it.
- Pages affected
- /