Site Speed Now Affects Google Ranking

Posted 04/09/2010 at 3:04pm | by Ryan Whitwam

2

Comments

Print

Nobody likes slow websites, but you know who really hates them? Google. The search first discussed their intention to consider site speed when ranking search results late last year. Now they're actually rolling it out. Google was looking to assuage fears in their blog post saying, "While site speed is a new signal, it doesn't carry as much weight as the relevance of a page."

Google makes its case by citing internal studies showing that people like fast websites. The fact that Google designed and performed a study to show this is just illustrates how much money it has. Aside from the obvious, the Big G also noted that faster load times can decrease a site's operating expenses over time. Google will use two measurements to determine a site's speed, the response to the Googlebot and load times from the Google Toolbar.

Google's algorithm has about 200 variable in it. Adding this one is not expected to affect most sites. In their blog post, Google said that currently only 1% of results are being altered by the new rules. Interestingly, this new system was rolled out a few weeks ago. At least at this point, the difference isn't great enough that anyone noticed a change.