HTTP Archive: today’s runs
I just finished processing the “May 16 2011” run for HTTP Archive and HTTP Archive Mobile. Here are some interesting observations.
HTTP Archive (desktop)
As of today there is six months of historical data in the HTTP Archive. As a reminder, the world’s top ~17K web pages are being crawled. Since the actual URLs in the list at any given time can change, I start by looking at the trends for the intersection of URLs. This means the list of URLs is exactly the same for each data point. The total transfer size continues to grow: up 8 kB (1.1%) since the last run on Apr 30 2011, and up 53 kB (8%) from the first run back on Nov 16 2010.
Looking at the Image Transfer Size chart we see images are the main cause for this growth – up 5 kB from Apr 30 2011 and 43 kB since Nov 16 2010. Conversely, the transfer size of Flash has steadily dropped from 81 kB on Nov 16 2010 down to 71 kB on this last run on May 16 2011 – a 12% decrease.
I used the new Compare Stats page to compare the interesting stats from Nov 15 2010 to May 16 2011. I again chose the “intersection” of URLs to get an apples-to-apples comparison. In addition to the transfer size increases mentioned previously, we can see the growth of various JavaScript libraries on these ~17K web pages over the last six months:
- jQuery is up from 39% to 44%
- Facebook widgets have grown from 8% to 13%
- Twitter widgets increased from 2% to 4%
The “Pages Using Google Libraries API” chart shows adoption of this CDN has grown from 10% to 13% since Nov 16 2010. This means even more cross-site caching benefits for users.
HTTP Archive Mobile
The HTTP Archive Mobile just launched last week. There’s only two weeks of historical data gathered on just the top 100 web pages, so there aren’t any major shifts in the trending charts just yet. Nevertheless, comparing the mobile stats between the last two runs, May 12 and May 16, has some interesting revelations.
The “Pages with the Most JavaScript” chart shows that the Twitpic page’s JavaScript grew from 308 kB to 374 kB – a 66 kB (21%) increase. This highlights the value of HTTP Archive (both desktop and mobile) to individual websites as a way to track performance stats and have a permanent history.
There are some other interesting stats at the individual website level, but we’ll need a few months of mobile data before we can draw conclusions about any trends. In the meantime, check back here around the 15th and 30th of each month to see the latest runs and discover new observations about how the web is running.