Google hints that site speed may soon affect rankings

Tuesday 17 November 2009 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

At the PubCon search event in Las Vegas on Thursday, Google's ever-cheerful Matt Cutts gave the strongest hint to date that site speed will soon become a factor in SERPs rankings.

In his conference presentation, as well as in a video interview with WebProNews, Cutts revealed that there is a strong lobby within Google that wants to introduce a new ranking factor concerning how fast a site or page loads. Page speed is already a factor in the search ad AdWords quality score but is not, as yet, used in the organic ranking algorithm.

In the WebProNews interview, Cutts explains, "Historically, we haven't used it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast. It should be a good experience, and so it's sort of fair to say that if you're a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus, or if you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don't want that as much."

Although he didn't categorically say that speed will be a factor – or give any indication as to how much weight it would carry – many webmasters are taking the hint and starting to reassess their site architecture and optimise page speed. In the video, Matt Cutts goes on to explain that there are many tools available for webmasters to enhance site speed, directing developers to Google's Site Speed website. This site has a number of resources, some of which – such as the analysis tool, Page Speed, and the code optimisation tool, Closure – have been developed by Google and some of which are from other developers.

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