Google Makes Mobile Search Faster With Ping Attribute

Ilya Grigorik, a Google developer advocate, announced last night a small tweak Google made to the mobile search experience that will speed up the mobile search experience on mobile Safari and Chrome by 200-400 milliseconds. By implementing a attribute named <a ping>, Google is able to asynchronously do the click tracking and redirect virtually at […]

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google-one-second-mobile-featuredIlya Grigorik, a Google developer advocate, announced last night a small tweak Google made to the mobile search experience that will speed up the mobile search experience on mobile Safari and Chrome by 200-400 milliseconds.

By implementing a attribute named <a ping>, Google is able to asynchronously do the click tracking and redirect virtually at the same time, speeding up the time it takes to track and redirect the user to the mobile site.

Grigorik said, Google is “gradually rolling out this improvement to all browsers that support the <a ping> attribute.” He also explained in his own words how it works:

What’s the benefit? Whenever the user clicks on a result, typically they are first sent to a Google URL redirector and then to the target site. With <a ping>, the click is tracked using an asynchronous call, meaning that the user sees one less redirect and a faster overall experience!

google-mobile-ping-attribute

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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