How to Remove "doubleclick.net" Requests from Your Website

Hey there!

Have you noticed "doubleclick.net" requests popping up when reviewing your website‘s performance? As someone who cares about site speed and privacy, removing unnecessary third-party calls like this can be beneficial.

In this post, I‘ll share my in-depth guide on identifying and eliminating doubleclick.net requests for good. I‘ll also discuss alternatives, additional optimizations, and how to confirm removal.

What Exactly is Doubleclick.net?

Essentially, doubleclick.net is a domain owned by Google that serves various ads, analytics services, and remarketing pixels. It is part of their DoubleClick digital marketing platform.

Some examples of how doubleclick.net gets used:

Delivering Google AdSense ads – those responsive display ads placed through Google‘s ad network.
Enabling remarketing in Google Analytics – those features that let Google track visitors to target ads.
Serving video ads on YouTube and display ads on Maps when embedded.
Allowing ad targeting and serving for other ad networks that integrate with DoubleClick.

Often these third-party DoubleClick scripts get added without direct implementation. For example, Google Tag Manager can pull in doubleclick.net requests. Video and ad platform tags can as well.

This means even if you don‘t directly use AdSense or Analytics remarketing, doubleclick.net requests can end up on your site.

Why Consider Removing Doubleclick.net?

As a website owner, there are a few potential benefits from removing unnecessary doubleclick.net requests:

Faster Page Speeds

According to Google‘s own recommendations, optimizing third-party usage is a top factor for improving site speed.

Cutting out unnecessary third-party calls like doubleclick.net can reduce the number of round trips your browser has to make, shrinking load times.

Fewer requests also means less JavaScript for your browser to process. For a 100 ms improvement on just one request, your site‘s revenue could increase 1% according to Google research.

Improved Privacy

Doubleclick.net enables Google to collect data on your website traffic via cookies, which they leverage to target ads and analyze activity.

By removing it, you can reduce external tracking and improve visitor privacy.

Think about it – if you ran a small shop, you wouldn‘t want a random third-party watching your customers when they browse. Treat your website visitors the same way.

Enhanced Security

Like any external request, doubleclick.net introduces potential vulnerabilities from running external code on your site.

Cutting back on unneeded third-party requests shrinks the attack surface for your website.

DoubleClick in particular has been impacted by malware infections in the past. Though rare, fewer requests means less access.

Greater Control

Relying on third-party services also means your website depends on their platform. If DoubleClick has performance issues or outages, so will your site.

By minimizing reliance on external services, you retain more control over your site‘s speed and stability.

In summary, removing doubleclick.net offers gains in performance, privacy, security and control for your website. Let‘s explore how to identify and remove it.

Detective Work: Identifying doubleclick.net Requests

Before eliminating doubleclick.net requests, you need to locate the source. Here are two easy ways to identify any calls being made:

Check the Network tab in Chrome DevTools or a similar web inspector. Load your homepage and inspect the network requests – if doubleclick.net is present, you‘ll see requests like:

https://stats.g.doubleclick.net/someTrackingCodeHere

Review Google Analytics under Admin > Property > Tracking Info > Data Collection. If "Advertising Features" are enabled, doubleclick.net requests will be present.

Some common sources I find are:

Google Analytics remarketing tags
AdSense or other display ad units
YouTube/Maps embeds with older code
Advertising tags from networks like BuySellAds
Google Tag Manager containers

Take some time to carefully review where that sneaky doubleclick.net request may be coming from on your site before moving to remove it.

Step-by-Step Removal Instructions

Once you‘ve identified the source, here is my recommended process for eliminating those doubleclick.net requests:

Disable Google Analytics Remarketing

Navigate to your Google Analytics account and go to Admin > Property > Tracking Info > Data Collection.

Turn off the following options:

Remarketing
Advertising Reporting Features
Advertising Features

Save the changes and Google Analytics will no longer use doubleclick.net.

Check your source code and remove any Google AdSense ads served through their tag. This is one of the biggest sources of doubleclick traffic.

You can replace with any non-Google ad network. I‘d recommend checking out Media.net as a good alternative for AdSense.

Update Video & Map Embeds

For YouTube, switch your embeds to use the "Privacy Enhanced Mode" which blocks requests to doubleclick domains.

For Google Maps, use the Embed API or Static Maps API which don‘t utilize doubleclick.net behind the scenes.

Eliminate Other Ad Tags

Carefully review your source code and inspect your tag manager for any other ads that could be leveraging DoubleClick – BuySellAds, OpenX, AppNexus and more.

Removing their tags or swapping to non-Google ad platforms is an option. You can also consider dropping ads entirely.

Confirm Removal

Open up your developer tools, reload the page, and verify no more calls are made out to doubleclick.net domains. Filter requests by domain to double check.

Periodically re-check this as changes to code, tags, plugins etc could reintroduce it. But you should be all clear!

Helpful Alternatives to Doubleclick Services

If you remove doubleclick.net services, consider replacing them with these privacy-focused alternatives:

Analytics – Rather than Google Analytics, use Matomo, Simple Analytics, Fathom or another privacy-first platform.
Advertising – For Google AdSense, switch to a competitor like Media.net, AdThrive, Ezoic or Ad Sense.
Video/Maps – Use the privacy modes mentioned above to keep embeds without the tracking.

The goal is to avoid less familiar third-party requests – if I don‘t know what the script does or who serves it, I don‘t want it on my site.

Additional Optimization Opportunities

Removing doubleclick.net requests is a great start, but even more can be done to speed up and optimize your website:

Caching – Leverage a caching plugin like WP Rocket or use cache headers to minimize requests. Static assets should be cacheable.
Minification – Shrink CSS, JS and HTML files through minification to reduce their sizes.
Compression – Make sure gzip and/or brotli compression is enabled on your server. Reduces transferred bytes.
Image Optimization – Use TinyPNG or Squoosh to optimize images, which speeds up load times.
Lazy Loading – Only load assets like images or embeds as they become visible on screen.
Critical Path CSS – Inline critical above-the-fold CSS, and defer non-critical CSS lower down.

I‘d recommend reviewing performance with PageSpeed Insights and WebPageTest to uncover other optimization opportunities. The key is analyzing how your site loads and looking for any inefficient requests.

Validating Doubleclick Removal

Now that changes are made, properly testing removal before launching is crucial.

Here are two ways I validate the doubleclick.net request is actually gone:

1. Inspector Network Tab

Reload pages in Chrome DevTools or your browser‘s Inspector, head to the Network tab, and verify no requests are made to any doubleclick.net domains. You can filter requests by domain to double check.

2. PageSpeed Tests

Run your URL through PageSpeed Insights and WebPageTest before and after. There should be one less third-party request improving load times.

I also recommend monitoring tests over days and weeks to ensure doubleclick.net doesn‘t sneak back onto your site as you make future edits and additions.

Recap and Next Steps

Alright, that wraps up my in-depth guide on removing sneaky doubleclick.net requests!

I walked through what doubleclick.net is, why you may want to remove it, a step-by-step guide to elimination, alternatives to replace services, extra optimizations to consider, and tips for testing removal.

Removing unnecessary third-party requests can benefit website speed, privacy and security. Limit external tracking services calls and consider more privacy-focused platforms.

I hope this gives you a clear game plan for saying goodbye to doubleclick.net requests on your website for good! Let me know if you have any other questions.