How to check HTTP Compression with HttpWatch

July 07th, 2009 - 3:07PM

HTTP compression is one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve the performance of a web site. A browser indicates that it supports compression with the Accept-Encoding request header and the server indicates the compression type in the Content-Encoding response header. This screenshot from the Stream tab of HttpWatch shows these headers and the compressed content being returned from the server: Here’s another screenshot of a page that is not compressed: The browser still indicated that it accepted gzip and deflate compression, but the server ignored this and returned uncompressed HTML with no Content-Encoding header. The easiest way to check the amount … Continue reading →

Why is Google so Fast?

November 11th, 2007 - 9:00AM

It’s no coincidence that the most successful search engine on the planet is also the fastest to return results. Here are some time charts from HttpWatch for Google and its two closest competitors; Yahoo and Live.com: Google.com returns its results page in 0.155 seconds: Live.com returns its results page in 0.619 seconds: Yahoo returns its results page in 1.131 seconds: These screen shots were created by visiting the home page of each search engine with an empty cache and then entering a search term while recording with the free, Basic Edition of HttpWatch After clicking the ‘Search’ button, the results … Continue reading →