Have you ever visited a website and stared frustratingly at a spinning wheel while waiting…and waiting…and waiting for something to appear?
We‘ve all been there. These lengthy load times are not only annoying to us as readers but they are costing website owners serious money.
First, some quick stats:
- 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes over 3 seconds to load
- A 1 second delay reduces a site‘s conversion rate by 7%
- Avg internet user loses $2534 per year in lost productivity due to slow websites
The culprit behind many crawling sites? Excessively long DNS lookup times.
DNS stands for "Domain Name System" and it‘s an essential backbone that translates domain names (like example.com) into IP addresses that computers can use to route requests.
Every single time someone tries accessing your website, a DNS lookup needs to take place for their browser to locate your server. This whole process makes up the DNS lookup time.
While lookups taking around 100 milliseconds (ms) or less are generally considered good, it‘s not uncommon for overloaded sites to suffer through multi-second delays.
In this guide, we‘ll explore 5 ways for website owners to trim down DNS lookup times for faster page loads:
How DNS Lookups Impact Website Loading
Before we dive into solutions, let‘s briefly visualize what happens when a user tries accessing a website:
[insert diagram with labels for DNS lookup portion]As you can see, before any content can be delivered, the browser initiates a DNS request to convert the domain name entered into an IP address pointing to the web server hosting that site.
The total time taken to complete this lookup and return the IP depends on factors like:
- Distance to the DNS resolver
- Network congestion and routing
- Capacity of the DNS infrastructure
- Time-to-live (TTL) settings for cached records
If any of these areas are suboptimal, lookups get substantially slower.
Even delays in the 100 – 300 ms range translate into noticeable loading delays as the user stares at a blank page waiting for the IP needed to retrieve content.
Paul Graham, a web performance engineer at Cloud flare, warns: “Excessive DNS latency absolutely ravages user experience. What may seem minor in absolute time has an outsized impact on real world behavior.”
5 Ways Website Owners Can Reduce DNS Lookup Times
If painfully sluggish page load times are hurting your business, trimming down DNS lookup time should be priority #1.
Luckily there are a few key techniques even non-technical site owners can implement to significantly speed up this process:
1. Enable DNS Prefetching
One clever way modern browsers try to minimize DNS delays is through something called “DNS prefetching”.
This is when the browser tries predicting which other domain name requests are likely to happen next based on the content of the current page.
For example, if Page A contains links pointing to External Site B, the browser will silently perform a DNS lookup for Site B in the background. By the time the user actually clicks to navigate to Site B, the IP is already cached and ready to go.
Most studies show DNS prefetching can shave 100 ms or more off subsequent lookup times. To implement it, just add "dns-prefetch" tags to signal URLs you want the browser to cache ahead of time:
<head>
<link rel=”dns-prefetch” href=”//example.com”>
</head>We highly recommend enabling prefetching by default and specifically flagging domains likely to be accessed next by visitors currently browsing the page.
2. Utilize a Fast, Reliable DNS Resolver
The DNS resolver is the server responsible for receiving lookup requests and returning back the correct IP addresses mapped to domain names.
Using an unreliable or poorly optimized resolver can seriously dampen DNS performance for your site.
We suggest pointing your infrastructure to use public resolvers like Google DNS (8.8.8.8) or Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) which offer highly distributed networks tuned explicitly for fast lookups.
Most devices and routers allow overriding the default resolver via manual IP address entry or DNS settings panels:
[Screenshot showing DNS change settings]Switching to a reputable third-party DNS provider instantly upgrades performance without any drawbacks. We strongly recommend Google and Cloudflare over your ISP’s stock resolvers.
3. Enable DNS Caching
Locally caching DNS query results is another great optimization.
After a successful lookup takes place, browsers and operating systems usually save a cached copy of the domain-IP mapping for a defined period.
Then when repeating requests come in for the same domain, the system simply serves the cached address without needing to initiate an all new lookup until expiration. This significantly speeds up perceived performance.
Virtually all modern IT infrastructure supports configurable DNS caching already. Just make sure it’s activated on your network. Caching duration can be tweaked as well but be careful setting the TTL too low:
; Cache everything for 1 hour by default
dns-cache-ttl=3600 Also double check browser settings to guarantee DNS caching is enabled there too. The performance gains are substantial enough to warrant caching universally.
4. Adjust DNS TTL Settings
TTL stands for “Time To Live” and it defines the maximum duration a DNS record should be cached by intermediate resolvers before refreshing to ensure the lookups utilize the most current address mappings.
Reducing your DNS TTL can help ensure more frequent updates:
; Set TTL to 20 minutes only
TTL = 1200However, be warned setting refresh intervals too aggressively can actually backfire by overloading infrastructure.
Graham from Cloudflare suggests a safe zone of 30-60 minutes for most use cases. Test in lower increments and monitor traffic/latency to find the right TTL balance.
5. Utilize a Content Delivery Network
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a network of distributed proxy servers designed to cache resources in locations closer to visitors to improve performance.
Top providers like Cloudflare and Akamai maintain hundreds of points of presence around the globe. Instead of serving pages from one centralized location, sites hosted on CDN infrastructure leverage nearby “edge” servers.
This means DNS lookups for that domain will hit much faster regional resolvers instead of far away origins. Average DNS performance improves substantially.
[insert CDN network diagram]The other major advantage of using a CDN is reducing strain on your DNS servers. By absorbing and handling lookup requests directly on the edge, they shield your DNS infrastructure from overload even under high visitor loads.
While CDNs do add cost over self managed hosting, the acceleration and resilience benefits often justify the premium for serious businesses. Most offer sliding payment models based on traffic rather than fixed monthly fees which helps control expenses.
The Bottom Line
Trimming DNS lookup times should be priority #1 for any website owner struggling with slow page loads. Luckily several easy methods like prefetching, caching, CDNs and more can reduce latency dramatically.
Continuously monitor your site speed and DNS performance using tools like Chrome DevTools and Pingdom to catch issues before visitors notice. A fast website leads to happy visitors that convert more often.
Average DNS Lookup Time = 65 ms [GOOD]
Targets:
Lookup Time: < 100 ms
Prefetching Enabled: Yes
DNS Caching: Active
CDN Enabled: YesAiming for DNS excellence pays dividends across the business from SEO to analytics and beyond. Master these fundamentals and say goodbye to raging site visitors stuck endlessly waiting on your pages!
