вЂњA lot of websites are never that functional, in no small part because the trackers on those pages donвЂ™t stop loading.вЂќД®ven if those sites become functional for the user before then, Tillman suggests that there is still an unnecessary drain on the website load speed, its responsiveness and on the end userвЂ™s system resources. In the case of the slowest sites out there вЂ“ Ghostery calls out, Si.com and as the worst offenders вЂ“ they could take as long as two minutes to register as вЂњcomplete.вЂќ GhosteryвЂ™s study suggests that some sites never do quite finish loading. вЂњMany sites out there, if you go there without Ghostery, thereвЂ™s almost like a slow leak because they never stop communicating with their servers and for some of these sites the lagginess that results is persistent and it never goes away.вЂќ

вЂњThe truth is that a lot of websites are never that functional, in no small part because the trackers on those pages donвЂ™t stop loading,вЂќ he explained. In reality, many sites would be functional before then, but that, according to Tillman, is half the problem. It was focused entirely on a вЂњcompleteвЂќ state of a websiteвЂ™s generation, where there was nothing left to load. However, the web crawler didnвЂ™t look at websites in the same way a human would. To draw these load times, Ghostery employed a custom-built web crawler that was said to be comparable in usage to a consumer browser like Chrome or Firefox.

The average page load times were around 20 seconds, but when all trackers were blocked, that time dropped to just under nine seconds. Those trackers, whether small or many in number, proved to have a significant impact on page load speed too. Ghostery found that just under 90 percent of the websites investigated contained some form of third-party web tracker. In addition, Ghostery identified them websites as the websites that implement a lot of third party tracking technologies. The study focused on the top 500 sites as listed by Alexa, which they claim is where the vast majority of traffic in the US spends its time. Is it a minor thing, is it somewhat rare, or is a major thing thatвЂ™s widespread?вЂќ Jeremy Tillman, director of product management at Ghostery

вЂњThe purpose of the study was really trying to quantify that impact. вЂњWe were fairly confident that websites perform better and work faster when trackers are blocked,вЂќ GhosteryвЂ™s director of product management, Jeremy Tillman told Digital Trends. With its new вЂњTracker TaxвЂќ study though, Ghostery looked into the performance benefit of doing so, as well as the implicit privacy implications of not. Ghostery is a tool that is decidedly anti-tracker (itвЂ™s not the only one), in that it makes it easy for web users to block any they want, and anonymize the information harvested by ones that they donвЂ™t. From managing personalized adverts, to social network integration, they have an important part to play in how the internet works today, but does all of that come at the cost of a fast and efficient internet? The tracker tax Hidden from view behind the pretty front end of modern websites, trackers make up a major portion of the web browsing experience. But a new study from anti-tracking extension maker, Ghostery, is equally concerned about trackersвЂ™ ability to slow down web browsing itself. At a time when Facebook and other online entitiesВ are being called out for their privacy problems, trackers are certainly part of that conversation. Trackers are something that most internet users tolerate, though few have much fondness for.

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