Too Many Ads Slow Down Loading Time Unacceptably

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   Sue Adamsposted 8 years ago

   I know we are all here to make some money, but having 10 ads on a page slows down loading time to  such an extent that readers just don't have the patience to wait for a page to load. So they click away without reading our pages. To prove my point that the very high number of  ads is to blame for slow loading speed, do the following experiment:
   
   1. Click on the feed page at the top left of the screen for hubpages.com. This page only carries 1 ad and loads instantly.
   
   2. Now click on any of your own hub titles via your stats or profile page and see the difference in loading speed. It takes forever doesn't it?
   
   If readers click away before the page is fully loaded, they are not likely to click on any one of those 10 ads, are they? So we make no money at all. My bounce rate has always been in the high 90's on HubPages. On my own website, it is 40. I am the same author, with the same skills.
   
   Would HP management consider a compromise? Reduce the number of adverts to maybe 5 per page?
   
   LESS IS MORE

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Are you talking about the ads we place on our own hubs, or those placed by the team?  We cannot control what they do, but we can, of course, place fewer of our own ads.  I have never had lots of ads because I do think they crowd up the hubs and make them look spammy. My load times are immediate, and I use videos on just about every hub. Frankly, when people talk about having 10 or 20 ads on their hubs, I can't even figure out where they put them!
      
      Thanks for posting this one.  I hope people listen.

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   2. 72

      brakel2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Sue  I must be lucky, as my hubs load quickly from my stats page. I have a fast Internet. Could that be the reason? I have Cox with power boost, but I thought HP loading was the problem here.

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      1. 95

         Sue Adamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         No wonder your hubs load quickly. You don't have any ads on them. You must have your ads disabled. How on earth do you make any money here?
         
         Thank you for your post. It proves my point that the more ads are placed on our pages, the slower loading time is.

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            brakel2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

            My ads are not disabled. I receive money from HP ads and Google Adsense.

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            1. 95

               Sue Adamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               Sorry, but I cannot see any ads on your hubs whereas I can see many on my own and other people's hubs. Is there a glitch?

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                  brakel2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  I have no idea, but I have ads on all my hubs and always have. I can see them, so I do not know what could be the issue. I see ads on my hubs and on yours. I have made money this month on all my ads.

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                  1. 95

                     Sue Adamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                     OK Audrey,
                     I apologise. I had ad block on "disable for this site" when I first checked your hubs. Your internet connection must be really fast. Please tell me, what download speed do you have when you do a speed test?

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                        brakel2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

                        Apology accepted Sue. You had me going for a minute. I saw that another hubber mentioned fast loading, but it is unusual. i will check my speed, but I think it does not register fast. I don't know about those speed tests.

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                        1. 95

                           Sue Adamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                           Hi Audrey,
                           
                           Go here:
                           http://ping-test.net/
                           You can drag the URL into your bookmarks bar and have it available to test your Internet speed whenever it slows down for some reason.

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                              brakel2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

                              I tested my Cox Internet speed.  Download 6.98   Upload   5.39. It seems fast. Thanks for the other test address.

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               2. 86

                  TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  I see ads on her hubs and will add that they exist on mine as well and my articles load quickly.

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               3. 96

                  Solarasposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  I see ads on her page; they just take a coon's age to load.

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                     brakel2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

                     Why would that be when they load very quickly on my computer? Do your ads load more quickly? I don't need any more surprises. First no ads and now this. Maybe I need to make my pics smaller. I need help here, Solares, so tell me what's happening versus your loading. Thanks.

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   3. 72

      Matthew Meyerposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      The current ad layout is working as designed and implemented.
      I tested and did not notice a speed issue with the current ad layout as far as load times.
      It is probable that computers with CPU, disk, RAM, or ISP limitations may experience longer load times.
      
      As for ad selection or an ad showing multiple times, some others have addressed this in the thread, but this is often a result of cookies or other tracking information and you can often change the ads you see by clearing your cookies.

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      1. 95

         Sue Adamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Thank you, Mathew, for finally replying to this thread.
         
         I clear my cookies regularly and have just done so again, but the loading time for my hubs is still very slow while loading time for the Feed Page (with only 1 ad) is instant.
         
         But that is not the point. This is not personal to me.
         
         As with the other issue about the invisible share buttons, our  concerns are not about our own experience/equipment but more importantly, about what works or doesn't work for the majority of our readers.
         
         How do you explain the terribly high bounce rates on HubPages compared to our own websites which carry fewer ads?

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         Solarasposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         When I bring up one of my hubs, the page takes several seconds to load, and the ads to the right take 10-15 seconds to load. I am not an SEO expert, so I don't know what Google is looking at full page load or partial page load.

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   4. 97

      Pollyanna Jonesposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I've had a look on my Google AdSense page, and it reports that the PageSpeed insights for Desktop performance needs attention. Mobile is okay with a green tick, but Desktop has a yellow exclamation mark. It's brought down my site health rating to 3/5 on the Scorecard report. The pages with this issue are all HubPages. The Ads take too long to load and it's pushing things back to page 2 or 3 when you run a Google search.

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      1. 72

         brakel2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I learned that my pages load quickly but not when you are at HP. In checking some other hubber sites, it appears that it is a problem for many folks at HP. We do need help. This info is from Google site review. My desktop mostly says 79 out of 100, and mobile says 64 out of 100 load time. Then it shows what needs improvement - mostly ads and images taking too long. A lot of the mobile say user experience 100 out of 100. The mobile 64 out of 100 makes no sense to me. When I load them to HP, they load quickly but not according to this site review.

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            brakel2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

            At this site, I was entering the URLs.

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   paradigm searchposted 8 years ago

   You are right. I had a devil of a time when I was looking at hubs this morning. They wouldn't let me scroll for quite awhile as all the ads were loading.
   
   Maybe at least get rid of the videos.

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   TacTacposted 8 years ago

   I agree with this, they are poorly placed ads as well, often right after titles and such. But poor load times are definitely unacceptable.

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   1. 95

      Sue Adamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Have you checked the difference in loading time between a page with 1 ad and a page with 10 ads as described in my original post?
      I am not saying we should only have 1 ad, but we should definitely reduce the number of ads if we want to reduce bounce rates and increase engagement and revenue.

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4. 94

   melbelposted 8 years ago

   I do feel we have too many ads. Not really for the sake of load time, but really it makes the site look junky and spammy. It screams, "Don't trust this article."

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5. 95

   Sue Adamsposted 8 years ago

   @TT,
   I am talking about the ads placed by the team. Like you, I place only one, mostly 2 ads of my own on my hubs.
   And you are right melbel, the site does look spammy.
   
   If there were fewer ads, we would have room to bring back the share buttons into view.

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      Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      +1

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      1. 70

         makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I'd third that view.

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6. 70

   makingamarkposted 8 years ago

   I thought the one thing we know for certain is that Google does NOT like too many adverts.  Particularly if they have no relationship to the content of the site.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      If this is the case, then why is the team placing so many ads?  Surely they know the consequences of doing this.  Something here does not make any sense.

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         makingamarkposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I think that's the whole point of this thread
         
         What we know is that too many adverts does the following:
         * annoys Google
         * takes up too much space above the fold - thus shunting share buttons out of view - thus reducing the number of times hubs are shared - thus reducing traffic
         * confuses and/or annoys the reader who hasn't come to a site to look at adverts - who may then disappear fast never to return
         
         In my experience the fewer the adverts the more likely they are to be looked at. Less is more!
         
         It's when readers are met with a barrage of adverts that they screen them out as they read - hence they don't click on them and this then reduces the advert income. (which, as I understand it, is one of the reasons why Google doesn't like to see a lot of adverts - they know people stop looking at them.)
         
         I've been wondering what's been happening to my advert income - it's taken a dive - maybe this is the explanation?
         
         What I don't understand is the notion - mentioned somewhere but I forget where - that HubPages has some sort of agreement with Google to have extra adverts.
         
         That just struck me as being a bit kamikaze-like!
         
         Supposing Google said to HP "you put as many adverts as you like on your site"
         Supposing Google thought "because we won't be altering our algorithm which dings sites which have too many adverts. Besides which we don't like article sites so we're not going to worry about the fate of HP!"
         
         Just supposing.... 
         However it's certainly worth raising the issue of the adverts......

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            TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

            I wish the team would look at this thread and respond because guessing does not give us answers.

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      Lee Hansenposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I agree on the load lag time, excess number of ads and inappropriate ads. I just visited on of my own hubs about fashions for babies and kids - it had an ad with two shapely ladies butts in thongs ...

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7. 87

   neosurkposted 8 years ago

   The ad placement in the mobile layout is worst. Far too intrusive.

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8. 95

   Sue Adamsposted 8 years ago

   What is the most off-putting thing to any visitor?  To have not one, but  two ads of the same unrelated product above the fold. Any hub with 2 consecutive ads for the same product would be unfeatured for spamming. Do the HP rules not apply to team members?
   
   
   
   The space and loading time taken up by the second (repeated) ad is enough for 3 x the space our lost  share buttons would occupy horizontally.
   
   The current ad policy is ridiculously incomprehensible and damaging all our hard work.

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      colorfuloneposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I was getting two ads for Grammerly regularly until I disabled it and cleared my cache. It must have been because of cookies.

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9. 0

   promisemposted 8 years ago

   Don't judge the speed of your pages by seeing how long they take to load on your personal computer. Use Google PageSpeed. It will tell you what Google thinks of their speed.

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   1. 95

      Sue Adamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you, promisem for this info. I speed tested a few of my hubs on Google Page Speed Insights via this URL:
      
      https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
      
      and here are the results:
      
      For Mobile
      
      67 / 100Speed
      
      Should Fix:
      Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
      Your page has 3 blocking script resources and 1 blocking CSS resources. This causes a delay in rendering your page.
      None of the above-the-fold content on your page could be rendered without waiting for the following resources to load. Try to defer or asynchronously load blocking resources, or inline the critical portions of those resources directly in the HTML.
      Remove render-blocking JavaScript:
      http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jq … ery.min.js
      http://z.hubimg.com/s/ss19356687.js
      http://z.hubimg.com/s/ms37056728.js
      Optimize CSS Delivery of the following:
      http://z.hubimg.com/s/hp-resp58277422.css
      
      For Desktop
      
      75 / 100Suggestions Summary
      
      Should Fix:
      Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
      Your page has 2 blocking script resources and 1 blocking CSS resources. This causes a delay in rendering your page.
      None of the above-the-fold content on your page could be rendered without waiting for the following resources to load. Try to defer or asynchronously load blocking resources, or inline the critical portions of those resources directly in the HTML.
      Remove render-blocking JavaScript:
      http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jq … ery.min.js
      http://z.hubimg.com/s/ss19356687.js
      Optimize CSS Delivery of the following:
      http://z.hubimg.com/s/hp-hub144975176.css
      
      The trouble is that fixing this is out of our hands. Only HP engineers can deal with these poor speed problems.

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         promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         That said, there is another side to the story. HubPages gets a lot of traffic from Google because it encourages us to write authoritative articles, mean 700 to 1,500 words or more.
         
         If we write that much, we need to keep people engaged, which means we have to add more photos and features such as comments, polls, etc. They add to the download time of a page.
         
         I think the answer lies in a balance between speed and engagement.

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         1. 72

            brakel2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Some people are removing ads and images to help speed up load time. I have read several articles about going to a photo editor and resizing photos to make them more amenable to faster loading and that larger images take longer to load. The last point cannot be proven by the Google page load site as I have tested the larger and smaller ones. Maybe someone could write a hub about SEO for images who has expertise. We need a devoted photo expert.

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