Auto-correct URLs that would redirect?

[Ryan Witt]

Got some feedback from Mathias Bynens on the blog that probably deserves to be mentioned here:

In your Apple vs. Adobe comparison, you should really use the correct URLs (including www.). Both the Apple and the Adobe website redirect from domain.com to www.domain.com, so to measure the loading speed of the site you can just skip this step by entering the correct URLs straight away.

To demonstrate the difference:


http://whichloadsfaster.com/?l=apple.com&r=adobe.com

right_ms,left_ms
1765,1654
980,1476


http://whichloadsfaster.com/?l=www.apple.com/&r=www.adobe.com/

right_ms,left_ms
871,1079

My response: 

Thanks for the feedback!

You are absolutely right, redirects certainly affect the result. I'm not sure exactly how to fix it, or even if it needs to be fixed. We can't assume, for example, that all sites redirect from example.com to www.example.com. Some (like the fastsoft homepage) even redirect to a path other than "/".

Perhaps it's possible to probe the root domain with an Ajax request when the user enters the URL, but I'm not sure this is reliable. As it is now, a user like you that knows the difference can put in whatever URL you want. For users that don't know, it's probably better to accept whatever they type in, since arguably that is what they would type if they wanted to visit the site. You'll notice if you click on "more" and analyze the page with GTmetrix (or on your own with YSlow or Page Speed), it will detect the redirect chain and recommend that you shorten it. This would help users detect the problem themselves.

So, for Adobe and Apple, I probably should add the "www". I normally leave it off when I'm typing it, but the google search links to both include the "www", and that's probably how most visitors get there. 

[Sergey Chernyshev]

It is actually a problem for ShowSlow as different tools report different URLs as a result (e.g. YSlow and Page Speed) so I wrote a simple resolver to do initial resolution when people enter the URL.

         Sergey