Does Google Analytics have performance overhead?

Question

To what extent does Google Analytics impact performance?

I\'m looking for the following:

• Benchmarks (including response times/pageload times et al)

Answer 1

Loading any extra javascript to your page is going to increase the download time from the client's perspective. You can ameliorate this by loading it at the bottom of your page so that your page is rendered even if GA is not loaded. I would avoid caching because you would lose the advantage of the client cache for your page. If the client has it cached from some other page, your page's request will be filled from the client itself. If you change it to load from your site, it will require a download even if the client already has the code (which is likely). Adding a task to your software processes to avoid loading the file from Google seems unwarranted for what may be an unnecessary optimization. It would be hard to test this since it would always serve up faster locally, but what really matters is how fast it works for your customers. If you decide to evaluate keeping it locally, make sure you test it from your home internet connection --- not the machine sitting next to the server in your rack.