Speed Matters: Google Adds Speed to Its 200 Web Search Signals
On its Webmaster Central blog, Google has confirmed that it now counts rank among the 200 other factors it weighs when ranking a page. Reaction across the web has been mixed, from “it’s about time” to “they don’t know what they’re doing.”
The blog posting points out several tools webmasters can use to measure the speed of their pages, including: Page Speed, YSlow, WebPagetest and one within Google’s own Webmaster tools. More tools can be found at code.google.com/speed/tools.html.
Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, urges everyone not to panic:
We still put much more weight on factors like relevance, topicality, reputation, value-add, etc. — all the factors that you probably think about all the time. Compared to those signals, site speed will carry much less weight.
Some webmasters with sites that contain long pages are less than thrilled with the change, however. Pages with several pictures that load individually rank lower on speed in Google’s Webmaster Tools but are much more user friendly than a page that loads all its content simultaneously. Google has yet to account for this discrepancy or give any indication as to whether it will.
Currently, only Google’s English service ranks site speed, with more languages to be added shortly.
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It's not black or white
yes you're right, there are some pages that takes too long for a full page to load, but main part is loaded really fast. I also wonder how will big G deal with this.
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