I need to provide technical documentation to our engineering about how page weight is determined. It seems obvious to me that the page weight includes the weight of the images because not only does Google store them for image search , the user has to wait for them to load before the page loads. Well in any case I provided documentation to that effect and am still getting a little push back because it is not Official Google Documentation.

Does anyone know of a link on Google, that discusses page weight in technical terms?

Thanks :)

p.s. You all know that page weight affect quality score too, right!

try this to start
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/03/landing-page-load-time-will-soon-be.html

Yeppers ive seen that one and sent that out to the technology team, however they dont believe me that images are incorporated into page weight!
Stupid, I know, but now it would help if I had some official documentation on this from Google, anyone got any ideas?

How 'bout...

Ensure your page loads quickly -- under four seconds if possible.

...from G's Choosing Landing Pages (http://services.google.com/awp/en_us/breeze/2979222/index.html) tutorial?

Hat tip to kenard at WmW (http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adwords/3607376.htm).

Okay, I went to that link, thanks, but again this is not new information. It seems that there isnt much documentation out there that clearly states how the Goolebot or Adbot handles images or files in external css. It seems pretty logical to me that the images affect load time, and that as they are indexed by the search engines they are a factor in page weight. Ive seen lots of other peoples websites confirm this to be true, however I cant seem to find anything about this on the actual Google website. Bah, oh well!

documentation out there that clearly states how the Goolebot or Adbot handles images or files in external css. It seems pretty logical to me that the images affect load time, and that as they are indexed by the search engines they are a factor in page weight.

When it comes to AdWords landing page load time and Quality Score, Googlebot really isn't that important. Load time is the amount of time it takes for the page to be functional to the user and not Googlebot.

Either way, I think this is what you want:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=87144#tips

In it, you'll find Google suggests "best practices":
http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html
which deal directly with issue like images and CSS, taken from "High Performance Web Sites" by O'Reilly. I think the book will provide you with all of the technical documentation you need.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529307/

Best of luck!

Thank You , Now There Is A Practical Answer
:):):):)

we all contributed based on your info... was originally not clear...

and you had some very knowledgeable people helping you

we all contributed based on your info... was originally not clear...

and you had some very knowledgeable people helping you

Good point Aussie!

p.s. You all know that page weight affect quality score too, right!

Yes, in fact we've been aware of it for almost a month.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080304-193426


Idea for AWR, Google's own "best practices" on this topic may not be a bad idea. It seems a little odd linking to Google suggested "best practices" at yahoo.com.;)