TerenceJoost,
I'd like to get an answer about the performance issues I have noticed and also how you see the plugin evolving, in light of the changes that Google recently made to their algorithm.
First, performance.
I just did some testing while I was waiting and the P3 Plugin Performance Profiler from GoDaddy tells me that, of the 17 active plugins I have on this site, the WordPress SEO plugin is taking 0.0206 seconds to load, which is 45% of the page load runtime.
WordPress Plugin Profile Report
===========================================
Report date: Fri Dec 16, 2011
Pages browsed: 10
Avg. load time: 1.4109 sec
Number of plugins: 16
Plugin impact: 3.25% % of load time
Avg. plugin time: 0.0459 sec
Avg. core time: 1.1060 sec
Avg. theme time: 0.1540 sec
Avg. mem usage: 22.45 MB
Avg. plugin calls: 1,807
Avg. db queries : 20.10
Margin of error : 0.1050 sec
Plugin list:
===========================================
Akismet
Buffer Button
Conditional Widgets
Headway Html Sitemap
Headway Navigation Leaf
Html On Pages
Newsletter Sign Up
P3 Profiler
Shortcode Generator Menu Dropdown
Si Contact Form
Simple Urls
Slimbox 2 Slideshow
Tinymce Advanced
Wordpress Seo
Wysiwyg Widgets
Xcloner Backup And Restore
Is there anyway to speed WordPress SEO plugin a lot, or even a little?
In fact, is there still a need for this plugin in its present form at all?
Google recently announced ten new algorithm changes to the way it displays and ranks search results. Danny Sullivan outlined these change and explained what he thinks we need to know.
I would be very interested to hear your comments and how, in particular, it might effect the immediate (or otherwise) development of WordPress SEO plugin, and SEO in the long run, i.e. from here on out. Since I rely on your knowledge and some of the software you write, I would like to know specifically about:
1. Better Snippets – Defined as the descriptions that Google shows for Web pages, snippets will be greatly improved because this text will now be selected from the main content on a Web page instead of from headers or menus
2. Application Rich Snippets – Google will start showing rich snippets for software applications that will provide more details within their search results. These application rich snippets will be also available to users more frequently.
3. Improved Page Titles – When creating page titles, Google will now place less emphasis on anchor text in order to enhance their relevance.
4. Ranking Boost for “Official Pages” – Google will strive harder to detect which pages are actually official, which will result in higher rankings for these official websites.
5. Much Fresher Results – In a move affecting up to 35 percent of total searches, Google’s improvements in ranking fresh content will better decide the level of freshness for each inquiry.
6. Enhanced Results for Date-Based Searches – The freshness of results will now also be determined by date to offer an additional degree of relevance.
7. Elimination of an Image Search Signal – Now, images that had references from multiple documents on the Internet will no longer be a factor in image search.
8. Greater Cross-Language Information Retrieval – Previously done only for the Korean language, Google will now automatically translate relevant English Web pages for the languages of Welsh, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Afrikaans, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Icelandic, and Malay.
9. Improved Autocomplete for IME Queries – Google has improved the way that Autocomplete responds to queries containing non-Latin characters so results are no longer muddled for Hebrew, Russian, and Arabic languages.
10. Better Autocomplete for Russian Language – Russian query predictions will no longer be as lengthy or random as previously.
With these changes, obviously Google hopes it will further strengthen its search supremacy through results that deliver higher quality for every query. That's all very well for their business plan, but of course, I only care about how it effects the searches for the stuff I have on my sites.
Terence.
