Victims of Their Own Success?

How do the Alexa Top 100 fare in terms of page load times?

Page load time is one of the key elements of web usability, and having a lagging response to your website can really dent your popularity. It’s easy enough, for most sites, to handle 1,000 visitors a day – but the top sites out there have to handle thousands of requests per minute, so efficiency and capacity are key concerns. Alexa provide a (somewhat inaccurate) listing of the top 100 busiest sites worldwide, so I set up a script to gauge their responsiveness – and to see who came out on top. [read more...]