In fact, according to a Pingdom study<\/a> of the world\u2019s top 50 news websites, the average load time of sites with tags was 9.46 seconds, and just 2.69 seconds when tags were disabled.<\/p> So how can you continue using tags without the negative performance impacts?<\/p> In this post, we\u2019ll explore the Pingdom findings in greater detail and look at how tag managers have emerged as the best way to organize, manage, and control the impact of tags on site performance. We\u2019ll also check out some popular tag managers, so you can continue reaping the benefits of third-party services without taking a hit to your page speed.<\/p> A tag in this context is a snippet of code that is added to a website to collect information and send it to a third party.<\/p> What are these third parties? Usually digital marketing services. Marketing relies heavily on data. Whether it\u2019s analytics to help you understand how people interact with your site, or user tracking information that supports your remarketing efforts, digital marketing needs data. And in order to get that data, third-party services need to add a tracking tag to your site.<\/p> There are hundreds of different services that help site owners collect and analyze data, the most popular of which is probably Google Analytics. Here\u2019s an example of the tracking code\u2014aka tag\u2014that GA requires users to insert into their site in order for analytics to work:<\/p> Tags typically need to be added to the <header> section of every page on your site that requires tracking.<\/p> Tags are essential for digital marketing. After all, it\u2019s rare that a site wouldn\u2019t have at least one tag, i.e. Google Analytics. The problem is, tags introduce latency and can heavily impact page speed.<\/p> (Remember that since v3.1, WP Rocket can host Google Analytics files locally<\/a>!)<\/p> Each tag you add to your site is another HTTP request. On top of that, when a tag makes a call to a third-party server, how quickly that outside resource responds adds valuable seconds to your load times.<\/p> So if you have 5, 10, 20 or more tags running on your site, things can quickly get out of hand.<\/p> It\u2019s easy to gauge how much of an impact tags might be having on your own page speed\u2014just run your site through a speed testing tool like WebPagetest or GTmetrix and check out the loading time of your HTTP requests, taking note of the waterfall analysis.<\/p> But the true impact of tags on a much wider scale has only recently been made clearer thanks to Pingdom\u2019s study into the world\u2019s top news sites.<\/a><\/p> The web performance and monitoring company tested the top 50 news sites, according to Alexa, using the browser plugin from Ghostery<\/a> to see how many and what type of tags loaded on the homepage of each site.<\/p> The research found that tags increased the average load time of sites by 6.77 seconds.<\/strong><\/p> It also found that:<\/p> Here\u2019s another startling insight to come out of the research: The sites that loaded the most number of tags were nypost.com<\/a> and chron.com, with an astonishing 85 tags each.<\/p> Pingdom plotted the distribution of load times for all the pages tested and found that 42% of the sites had a load time of over 9 seconds. But when tags were disabled, 76% of sites loaded in 3 seconds or less, and the average page load time for all pages tested dropped to 2.69 seconds.<\/strong><\/p> Image credit: Pingdom<\/a>.<\/em><\/p> So what does this Pingdom research tell us?<\/p> For a start, tags have an incredible impact on page speed\u20146.77 seconds is nothing to sneeze at, particularly when, according to Kissmetrics research<\/a>, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less and 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.<\/p> Of course, simply removing all tags from a site would be an easy solution to boost page speed. But in reality, it\u2019s not a viable option since we need tags to collect data and, ultimately, they do help provide a better user experience.<\/p> Take a peek at the header sections of the nypost.com<\/a> and chron.com<\/a> websites\u2014it\u2019s not pretty. But as major news organization, the New York Post and Houston Chronicle rely on user data to inform their digital marketing efforts.<\/p> Adding one tag to a page is no drama, but 85 like nypost.com<\/a> and chron.com<\/a>? That\u2019s 85 snippets of JavaScript that developers had to add to each site, either site-wide or in very rule-specific places.<\/p> Even with code for tags in place, every change means developers have to make updates to a web page, costing hours of development time, and no doubt push back when marketing teams ask for new tags.<\/p> It\u2019s frustrating on both sides\u2014marketing teams don\u2019t want to wait long for developers to add and edit tags. But at the same time, developers don\u2019t want to deal with the latency that tags introduce.<\/p> So how do you get all the benefits and features of tags and third-party tracking services without the negative hit to page speeds?<\/p>What Exactly is a Tag?<\/h2>
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/1\/google-analytics-tracking-code.png\"){kind=tracking}
<\/figure><\/div>The Impact of Tags on Website Performance<\/h2>
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<\/figure><\/div>Disorganized Tags Can Get Messy\u2026<\/h3>
The Case for Tag Managers<\/h2>
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/1\/google-tag-manager.png\")
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