Does Google Ads slow down a store?
In 7IT’s test of 367 US online stores, Google Ads ran on 234 of them (63.8%). At first load it is light: a median of 5 KB and 0.00 s of phone time. Google’s test measures the first load only, so anything it loads after a visitor interacts is not in these numbers.
Stores with it and without it.
| Stores | Median score | Main content | Blocking time | Apps on the page | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| With Google Ads | 234 | 32 | 12.8 s | 1653 ms | 26 |
| Without | 133 | 43 | 10.4 s | 604 ms | 11 |
Stores that run Google Ads had a median score of 32, against 43 for stores without it. They also run more apps overall (a median of 26 against 11), so that gap is not all Google Ads’s doing. The size and phone time above are Google Ads’s own. On this sample there is no score penalty that can be pinned on it.
One in four stores that load it download more than 11 KB of it, and spend more than 0.00 s running it. Median Google phone-lab results, home pages only, September 2026. Method and limits in the study.
If you run Google Ads.
- Ad pixels count visits; they do not need to block the visit. Load them after the first interaction, or move them server-side (Conversions API, server-side tagging) so the phone does less.
- Check every pixel still feeds a campaign that is running. Pixels outlive campaigns.
- One container for all pixels, loaded late, beats many tags each loading early.