It’s official. Google is incorporating page speed as a factor into it’s page ranking system. Any reason to panic?
Well Matt Cutts seems to be totally calm and cool about all the fuss with page speed becoming a Google page rank factor. He thoroughly explained in his blog about it’s effects and the changes that will happen in it’s implementation.
I don’t know if it’s true but he claims that less than 1 percent of search queries will change as a result of incorporating site loading speed into Google’s page ranking system. That’s a pretty low number if you ask me. So low, that I won’t even be bothered about this change if this much is true.
And it seems as if Matt is telling us the whole truth – because they claimed to have already launched it weeks back and I didn’t notice anything in my search queries as an SEO specialist.
Matt also explained why the ‘big-shots’ or big companies who can afford better and faster hosting are not gonna benefit from this as much as all the other small-fry bloggers out there (that includes me). Because small sites often respond faster than large companies to changes in the web. And a little tweaking in your site can boost your site speed big-time.
Matt summarized this change in three main points:
“First, this is actually a relatively small-impact change, so you don’t need to panic.
Second, speeding up your website is a great thing to do in general. Visitors to your site will be happier (and might convert more or use your site more), and a faster web will be better for all.
Third, this change highlights that there are very constructive things that can directly improve your website’s user experience. Instead of wasting time on keyword meta tags, you can focus on some very easy, straightforward, small steps that can really improve how users perceive your site.”
Tips for Keeps:
Work on your site and reduce all of the unnecessary media that can slow down your page loading speed if you want to be on top of the site-speed race.
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Nice post. I find it funny how people question whether Matt Cutts tells the whole truth to webmasters. In my opinion his answers are always vague and mostly no brainers.
The change may affect less than 1% of sites, but considering how many sites out there are trash, I wonder what percentage of “legit” sites with PageRank are affected.
Hey George!
I won’t actually disagree with you as I also think Matt Cutts doesn’t reveal everything (but that perhaps would already be their strategy in publicity). As of your question, I also have no idea – it’s not easy to make a calculated guess either.
Google is now offering a page speed analyzer type thing. It gives you a score and suggestions on how to improve it. Check it out: http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/overview.html
I’m sure page speed it’s important, even if google is not scooring websites depending on page speed, the visitors will do it… returing visitors, bounce rate, and other metrics are correlated with page speed.
By the other side page speed can be time and money consuming.
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Speed of loading a website is relative value. In other words, it is being compared with something like “normal” or standard speed. Then everybody must know such base line… So, such innovation of Google should be explained in more details.