Last night, a Google developer advocate, IIya Grigorik, announced that Google has made a slight tweak to the mobile search experience. This small tweak will help speed up the mobile search experience on mobile Safari and Chrome by 200-400 milliseconds.
The way Google is doing this is by implementing a <a ping> attribute. With this ping attribute in place, Google will be able to click track and redirect virtually at the same time. This will speed up the amount of time it takes to track and redirect the user to the mobile site.
Grigorik explained in his own words how it works:
What’s the benefit? Whenever the user clicks on a result, typically they are first sent to a Google URL redirector and then to the target site. With <a ping>, the click is tracked using an asynchronous call, meaning that the user sees one less redirect and a faster overall experience!
Original Search Engine Land Post:
http://searchengineland.com/google-makes-mobile-search-faster-with-ping-attribute-173565