After seeing how slow the Google +1 button loads and how it can actually degrade your website’s overall pageload time, I started looking around for answers. First of all, I found that I’m not the only one complaining about the issue. Numerous others have started to point out the speed issues with the +1 button. My second thought was to perhaps remove the button from the site, although considering the effect the +1 button has on your website’s ranking that would mean less love from Google.

So what’s a developer to do? If we keep the button on our site, overall pageload times spike. But if we remove the button, or not add it, we might lose out on a potential piece of the social voting pie which most believe affects your search performance.

So here are my techniques for making Google +1 button load faster, or at least not slow down your site. Interestingly enough these techniques are the same set of tips and tricks that Google’s own Page Speed recommends for webmasters.

1) Save a step, Use Https

Make sure you use the HTTPS protocol in the URL for the JavaScript source, as the original version of the button snippets given out by Google included the HTTP version http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js which just does a redirect to https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js This issue has since been corrected by Google when you use Google’s +1 button generator site.

2) Don’t load the script on Mobile devices

As stated by Google, currently the Google +1 button does not support mobile devices like the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or Android. This means if you have the button code on a mobile site you’re basically wasting HTTP connections and adding extra weight to your site’s throughput. To get around this fact you need to write a little utility function in JavaScript that sniffs the userAgent for unsupported devices, and only makes a call to the script if your client is not one of those devices.
For example in the case of an iPhone and iPad website, you would do something like this:

function isMobileUser(){
  return (/iphone|ipod|ipad|android|blackberry|mini|windows\sce|palm/i.test(navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase()));  
}
if(!isMobileUser()){
	//include the plusone.js code here
}

3) Load the plusone.js script asynchronously

HTML 5 has introduced the ability to load scripts asynchronously allowing the rest of the page to load independently of potential bottlenecks. This feature is actually already in use for the Google Analytics code. Keep in mind that only Chrome and Firefox 3.6 and above support the async feature at this time. But it does not hurt your non-supporting browsers in any way so it’s safe to use. Here’s the code that combines the check for unsupported mobile browsers from before to load the +1 button script asynchronously. Note that since this code is loaded asynchronously it doesn’t matter if you put the call in the footer or header.

function isMobileUser(){
  return (/iphone|ipod|ipad|android|blackberry|mini|windows\sce|palm/i.test(navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase()));  
}
if(!isMobileUser()){
// create a new script element in the DOM
var gp1script = document.createElement('script');
// set it's type attribute, not really needed in HTML 5 but just to be safe
gp1script.type = 'text/javascript';
// set the HTML 5 attribute of async to true for the script tag
gp1script.async = true;
// set the source attribute to the https version of the google pluseone code
// change this to your own server path if you are cosidering using option 4 below
gp1script.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js';
// add the new script tag to the head or body of the page
(document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0]||document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(gp1script);
}

You would then place the tag where you want the +1 button to render, which since it is a proprietry tag will just be ignored if the script is not present on your page.

<g:plusone></g:plusone>

If you’re not comfortable with the tag, you can also use an HTML 5 version to render the +1 button on your site, which uses a css class of g-plusone and sets attributes as needed. For example you can display a standard +1 button with counts using this HTML 5 tag.

<div class="g-plusone" data-size="standard" data-count="true"></div>

Note that you can also place multiple +1 buttons on a single page. For example you might have a +1 button that directs its vote to your main parent homepage like so:

<g:plusone href="http://www.your_tld.com/></g:plusone>

4) Host the plusone.js file yourself

This option has been suggested by some users, although I personally argue against it just because you’ll be responsible for continuously monitoring changes and updating your version. The big benefit here is avoiding that dreaded HTTPS server, but keep in mind the script still will make that second call to load the plusone library so you’re still not home free. Only go this route if you’re seriously considering a site improvement and are willing and capable of pushing out updates to your version of the script. I’m sure the Google +1 team is making lots of changes and adding bug fixes which you will miss out on if you forget to update the script on a daily basis. In the extreme case you could perhaps write a program that downloads the latest version of the script from Google’s servers and updates your version on a daily basis, but then again this becomes a new task to keep an eye on.

Hope this helps and let me know if you have other tips and or feedback regarding these ideas. For more details be sure to read the +1 button API page.

Clicking on Video Units the first time will take you to a page where you are shown a video presentation on Video Units. here is the video:

So how do you actually make money with Video Units? The FAQ section of Video Units talks about this. When you place a video unit on your website, you’ll earn revenue from two types of ad formats: companion ads, which sit above your video content within the player and can be either text or image-based, and text overlay ads, which appear in the bottom 20% of the video content area. Ads on video units can be paid on either a cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand impression basis.

So companion ads are like banner ads and text overlay ads are like AdWords ads.

The setup page walks you through creating the code to place on your site and is quite simple to use. You just pick a color theme, the size of the video ad unit and you can also filter the content to be shown in your player. You can also save the player by giving it a name and description.

Video units come in 3 different sizes:

• 400 x 415
• 500 x 510
• 780 x 560

You can pick from 9 preset color schemes:

Click on Generate Code, Copy the code, and Paste it into your site. Below is a sample video unit which I’ve created for testing out the service.

Some of the advantages of Video Units over regular ads are:

You will now deliver content to your site as opposed to ads. You can also make the content relevant by choosing from categories you wish to have shown. The ads in videos are not obtrusive and you make money from them. You are actually enhancing the user experience and helping to attract and retain users.

Here are top 7 reasons why you really should check out Get Clicky.

1. Spy

Spy is a live view of visitors interacting with your web site. Its like having your own digg like spy page. This gives you the power of knowing in real time when and where your visitors are coming from, what pages they are visiting and where they are going when they leave. You see the user IP address as well as their browser and operating system. You can even trace specific users and see a breakdown of the history of their visits and actions made on the site. For each visitor you also see a nice set of stats such as their browser, operating system, language, resolution and whether JavaScript is enabled. As a side note Clicky works regardless of JavaScript support using image source loading.

2. Tagging and Filtering

You can go a bit further with IP address tracking in Clicky. You can tag certain IP addresses so you can easily identify them. You can also filter out specific IP addresses from the stats. For example If you want to exclude your own hits to your blog from being counted in your stats, enter the IP address(es) you use regularly and have them filtered out.

3. RSS

Stats via RSS is another amazing feature that gives you the power of keeping a tab on your site. Clicky gives you customizable RSS feeds that are updated every 30 minutes. Using these RSS feeds you are able to for example take a quick look at the action on your blog from any RSS reader. Now you can easily monitor the recent incoming links, popular incoming links, popular urls, recent searches, popular searches, recent visitors and dashboard data. A cool trick you can try is to change the duration for a feed. For example to see the hits in the past hour, append hours=1 to the feed url. Or to see popular incoming links in the past week append days=7 to the feed url. Another neat feature of the RSS feed is that it obviously doesn’t require authentication, so you can share the url with others as you wish and or transform the RSS data and publicly display your stats on your blog.

4. Clouds, CSV, XML, JSON, API

Stats data is presented to you in tabular format by default, however you can easily change the view of any table to a cloud view by clicking on a little cloud icon. I find the cloud visual more useful, especially when looking at long tables of data. For example, the Search keywords page in cloud view easily highlights the most popular search terms and search engines that are sending you traffic. For offline viewing you can also download your stats in popular formats such as CSV for Excel, and also XML or JSON which can be useful for feeding them to your own applications. If you are comfortable with programming, you can even use the API provided to access the data from Clicky using your sitekey and site_id.

5. Powerful Dashboard

You can edit your main dashboard page to see the blocks that you are most interested in. By default you get the basics, Links, Searches, and Content. I also like Recent Visitors and Locale. On the Basics widget a summary stats table gives you the birds eye view of what is going on. You see the number of visitors, the number of actions performed, total time spent on your blog, as well as averaged numbers such as Average actions per visit and Average time per visit. If that wasn’t enough you also see a comparison percentage column which shows you how today’s stats compare against the previous day’s data, or the same day last week.

6. Google Maps

For those of you that like to see geographical data, Google Maps is very nicely intergrated into Clicky in a few places. You can see the geolocation of any specific user as well as the locations of all visitors to your site on the map.

7. WordPress Plugin

If you use WordPress, and you should be, this plugin automatically puts your tracking code at the bottom of all pages on your site and filters out all traffic from site admins like yourself. It also does the whole ‘custom data tracking’ thing to automatically name your visitors inside the Clicky interface based on what they entered on your comment form.

There are a ton of other features that I don’t have time to go into here, such as tracking custom data, tracking downloads, FeedBurner integration, HTTPS support and more. You can try out a demo of a sample tracking site to get a feel for the clean and easy to use user interface.

When you first register, you get 21 days of premium service free, so you can try out all the features. You can track up to 3 web sites and 1,000 daily page views per day per site for Free. Beyond that level there are reasonably priced premium services which get you more sites, more features, and higher traffic levels – starting at less than $2/month.

Bust A Name lets you mash up a series of words and shows you a set of available domains. In case you don’t know how to use web forms, Ryan has made a video nice little video demo for you.

Domain Scrub looks for typos and misspelled domain names. Most of the time these domains are baits for bad typers. Smart companies buy out all the typos in their name before anyone else does.

Domain hacks lets you find a domain that combines domain labels, especially the top-level domain (TLD), to spell out the full “name” or title of the domain, making a kind of pun, for example del.icio.us

MakeWords.com has advanced query features that allow you to refine your domain query for starting with, ending with, max letters, language rules random names and more.

Just Dropped is a domain search of recently dropped domain names, good for recycling/salvaging old domain names.

Psychic Whois, Instant Domain Search and PC Names. don’t suggest anything, but do give you instant availability for domain names as you type.

Domaint Tools offers a great suggestion tool for finding the right domain name, and also has a keyword based search tool with lots of options to narrow down your results.

squURL has a nice search interface and shows some simple suggestions as well.

DomainIt has a domain suggestion service to give you a large list of suggestions.

DomainsBot gives you an inline ajax auto complete feature for searching domain names.

Nameboy is another tool for using keywords to find domains

Yahoo domain search provides similar options in your search results.

Uwhois is a nice tool to search all Generic Top Level Domains and most Country Code TLDs.

Bemmu.com lists expired domains with indications of Wikipedia, part of speech, delete days, Google trends and more.

3LA lists Three Letter expired domain names, dyyo lists Four letter expired domain names, and 5 Letter lists 5 letter domain names.

Split It! visually shows you how your domain name string will be split. Use this to avoid getting an accidentally funny domain name.

Is your creative side running dry? Try these tools for some magic!

To come up with new words try Dislexicon

Word Mixer Enter 5 words and get 2-3 syllable results.

Word Finer for crossword pattern matching.

RhymeZone gives you rhymes and synonyms of any word.

Dot-o-mator is a tool for mixing letters and to make up your own words and make up a nifty Web 2.0 domain name.

WordConstructor is great for generating a random name, brand, or domain name.

A word of caution

Don’t get your idea stollen! Don’t search for your domain name until you are ready to register it. More companies are now selling their domain search records to people in trying to make money in lucrative ways. Read this article on domain tasting to find out more.

Do you know of any other unique domain tools?

We’re sorry…
… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.

Here is a screenshot of the page I get.

I am guessing this had to do with the number of queries per minute or some other type of quota put on the blog search page. I’m not quite sure I understand the logic behind this limitation. The only thing I can think of is that the application is running low on physical resources.

What happens when non-techy users see this error page? They freak out! They go buying all sorts of virus software and get all paranoid thinking their PC is infected. This is not a user friendly message and Google should find a nicer way to handle this, especially when their stock is trading at over $500 per share. After a few minutes of “googling” around, I found a few other people mentioned getting this same error on other Google search properties, even on the Google homepage.

The easy fix for me was to delete the browser cookies and Voila I’m a human again. I have also heard that somtimes google can blacklist your IP in which case you might have to flush your DNS and renew your IP hoping to get a new one.

I have to say, this was an alarming, annoying and somewhat scary event, especially coming from a company who sends its own robots to my servers dozens of times every day. If Google were to really block me one day it would change my life or maybe I would just stop googling and start asking.

Also, if you wanna do some armchair sightseeing, try some interesting google sattelite maps. Microsoft’s TerraServer also has its own famous places. Very similar results.

Yesterday Google unveiled its plans for Google Earth, with 3D buildings support! Today there is a new site up, Chicago Crime that combines police data with Google Maps to show crimes in the Chicago area.

See who’s HOT or NOT in your zipcode, using this clever combo!