Uncompressed site - Google traffic doubled

[toystoyou]

Thank you.
Julie
www.toys-to-you.co.uk
Affordable ethical and Fairtrade childrens toys

[Buzby]

I uncompressed my site and expected to see my upload time increase above the three hours it usually takes.

Instead the site only took 2 hours and seemed to upload each page a lot faster than usual. I can only assume that Actinic compresses on the fly and this time is added in to the upload.

My site usually takes 80 minutes to do all pre upload checks and then 100 minutes to upload. The prechecks still took 80 minutes but the upload only took 40 minutes.

Has anyone else experienced this same effect?

Kind regards

Jason

[Stereo Steve]

I can't say I've noticed any change in upload speed but then I do have actinic running on a quad core 8GB x64 monster so it's pretty quick anyway.

I think the next step for us is as Gabe says, to spend some time tidying the code we have as it's been bastardised over the years and there are loads of comments (<!--FFS don't delete this--> etc. which we are now obsolete I expect.

[Mark H]

Can anyone think of a reason why uncompacting a site could actually damage SERPS or links from other sites?

[jont]

There should be no effect at all .... the vast majority of websites function with plain multiple lines of code.

[leehack]

I think the whitespace added could become an issue because if you use a lot of blockifs, the whitespace on your site really is huge. I've seen one site with the whitespace 5-6 times longer than the site code itself. I can't imagine that doing any good, especially as we are led to believe the higher up the code, the better the result returned.

[dave_finlayson]

Actinic really should sort out this whitespace issue. Apart from what you have just mentioned Lee, it makes it a right pain in the ass to troubleshoot incorrect code (or it does for me anyway). I went through and sorted it all out on our new site but not sure I have the patience or will to do it on the other one.

[Mike Hughes]

I tried uncompacting my site to see what happens and saw very little difference. There was a slight boost in the number of visitors from google after a couple of days but this dropped off a few days later which suggests it was just the usual fresh content boost that doesn't last very long.

I would guess you could see an improvement if you have some code that Google can't read, but as long as your site is OK I don't think there's any real benefit to doing this.

As my webpages load faster with compacting enabled I'll be compacting my pages the next time around.

Mike

[jont]

I think the whitespace added could become an issue

The amount of whitespace left is a nuisance (not sure if it is an issue unless shed loads is left behind and Google thinks the end of the page is reached) but can be overcome by judicious editing of the layouts involved.

I raised this issue during v8 Alpha testing with the desire to potentially use display:none if the code is empty.

[leehack]

Personally, I think the main point here would be that incorrect code littered with errors could see an improvement, whereas a compressed, correctly coded site with no errors would see little or no change.

Not sure what you are suggesting though Jonty, how do suggest reducing whitespace when it is mainly the blockifs causing it? I understand we can compress the code on our layouts, but that is the area where we want it laid out as uncompressed the most.

There is one thing you can pretty much guarantee (IMO) with Google, if traffic suddenly goes through the roof for whatever reason, within a week it will have stopped.

[jont]

The largest generator of white space are lists within blockifs .... these tend to be laid out for reading easily in the design tab but cause far too much white space. Once the layout is working I go back through and modify to reduce white space.

Don't forget you can also test a blockif for content / conditions and incorporate some css to remove the whitespace accordingly

[jont]

There is one thing you can pretty much guarantee (IMO) with Google, if traffic suddenly goes through the roof for whatever reason, within a week it will have stopped.

Aye - this is why it is best to run a couple of sites alongside each other or leave it for a while to get a more balanced view - leaving for a few days provides no insight at all.

[leehack]

Don't forget you can also test a blockif for content / conditions and incorporate some css to remove the whitespace accordingly

Introduce code to reduce whitespace, you are not getting away with that one young man!

[jont]

LOL - you know I like to keep a tidy house.

[RuralWeb]

Hmmm - I not really had any problems with excessive white space TBH but then I dont use many blockifs