Page loading speed, iAdvertisements, and human irrationality – The Monday April 12th Roundup

Lots from Google this week with two major announcements, including one on how page load times do affect ranking, and another on how you can now designate images within sitemaps.xml in order to increase indexing of image content.

Additionally we’ve got Apple iAd and what it means for the advertising industry, calculating life time visitor value, calculating the quality of an online form, and human irrationality online. Yes, quite a list this week.

• Big updates from Google last week. First they announced that you can now add images to sitemaps in order to key in the google bot on image based content to rank. For more information see: tags for adding images. Then, to few peoples surprise, they announced that page load time is a ranking factor. Here’s the thing though, how is slow loading a factor in content relevance? Especially compared to more important factors like accessibility or design. What’s next, valid HTML?
• On the advertising side, Apple has announced iAd, and AdAge covers how, like much of what Apple does, it isn’t game changing, but it will move the market forward.

• Smashing has a great article on the gradual disappearance of Flash, no doubt spurred by the Apple/Adobespat over the role of Flash on Apples mobile devices.
• Axian has compiled a list of information on ECMA-262-3. What is ECMA-262-3? That’s the scripting language at the core of Javascript, actionscript, and jscript Most of these lead to dmitrysoshnikov.com, who deserves the credit for this.

• Over at the Google Analytics blog the big G released a video of their webinar on Google Analytics Custom Variables.
• Kaushik is at it again with ways to calculate life-time value from visitors. You have to appreciate the attempt here to illustrate more intelligent business metrics (specifically to move beyond short term metrics).

• Not something I would expect from the GA blog, but good none the less, last week they published a guest post on how to measure the quality of an online form. Specifically, this deals with how to calculate the error rate of a form.
• Out of my Gord has a great post on human irrationality online. In it he talks about how prospect theory, bounded rationality and information asymmetry.

• Six Revisions has a guide on how to convince clients to use open platforms. Really its just a check list of why open source options rock, but might give some good notes for some one trying to convince their boss to move to a new platform.