Sometimes, you don’t need to have every last thing about website performance explained to you. Sometimes, you can just look at the world’s top websites and compare them for some interesting insights. That’s why sites like http://whichloadsfaster.com/ exist.

Which Homepage Loads Faster?

Abstract

Use Alexa rankings to determine the world’s most trafficked websites and then rank them using whichloadsfaster.com.

Alexa’s top 15 websites (including Bing):
1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Youtube
4. Yahoo!
5. Baidu
6. Wikipedia
7. QQ
8. LinkedIn
9. Windows Live
10. Twitter
11. Amazon
12. Taobao
13. Blogspot
14. Google India
15. WordPress
…
20. Bing

Methods

Since homepage loading speeds are extremely variable from second to second, this is not meant to be an absolute list. Some sites, as you’ll see, are actually neck and neck in terms of loading speed. Some days, for example, Facebook will load faster than Google India. Most days, it won’t.

Since direct comparison would have been too difficult, each site was loaded with http:// (~20ms) as a control. All website URLs measured were homepage URLs (e.g. https://www.google.com/). All URLs were punched in from Elmhurst (Queens, New York City), NY, USA.

Results

Alexa’s 15 most-trafficked websites (including Bing) ranked by website loading speed measured in milliseconds (ms).

Alexa’s Top 15 Websites (+Bing) ranked by Loading Time:
1. WordPress (70ms)
2. Windows Live (133ms)
3. Wikipedia (144ms)
4. Google India (161ms)
5. Facebook (162ms)
6. LinkedIn (168ms)
7. Twitter (171ms)
8. Yahoo! (177ms)
9. Google (181ms)
10. Bing (198ms)
11. Blogspot (316ms)
12. Youtube (551ms)
13. Baidu (724ms)
14. Amazon (1440ms)
15. Taobao (2322ms)
16. QQ (6327ms)

Conclusion

Very interesting! Many of us would have sworn that Google or Wikipedia would have ranked first, based on the simplicity of their homepage design, but that is not the case. WordPress, which has a huge splash banner on its homepage, loads almost twice as fast on average, and is the only website to consistently load in less than 100ms.

After WordPress, there is a fairly gradual spread from 130ms – 200ms between Windows Live, Wikipedia, Google India, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo!, Google (BIG surprise), and Bing. Blogspot trails in the middle around 316ms, and Youtube, with all its suggested videos and promotions, crawls in at around 551ms. Baidu makes Youtube look fast at 724ms.

Then things get really slow. Amazon, Taobao, and QQ all take over 1 second to load. Specifically, Amazon takes 1.4 seconds, Taobao takes 2.3 seconds, and QQ takes a whopping 6.3 seconds. For reference, most video viewers will give a video 2 seconds to load before going to another video.

Appendix

It should be noted that website performance speed and loading times aren’t only determined by the website servers, but also by where you’re trying to access the site from. Here are the top 20 places in the world when it comes to fast internet.

Top 20 Places With The Fastest Internet
1. Hong Kong
2. Japan
3. Romania
4. South Korea
5. Latvia
6. Singapore
7. Switzerland
8. Bulgaria
9. Netherlands
10. Belgium
11. United States
12. United Kingdom
13. Hungary
14. Israel
15. Czech Republic
16. Sweden
17. Portugal
18. Canada
19. Poland
20. Spain

So, basically, the fastest popular website in the world, WordPress, would load fastest in Hong Kong. The things you learn, right?