In an attempt to make web faster Google has made a slight change in it’s search ranking algorithm and the change that has been introduced is that of Site speed, a parameter that reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. In view of this change in website ranking method Google will now give preference to fast loading pages and will rank them higher in the search results.
Google officially declared on Webmaster Central blog about the new search ranking algorithm.
Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.
Google says that presently only 1% of the searches are affected by this site speed factor and the new searching algorithm currently holds only for searches made on Google.com in english language only.
The benefits of this new search algorithm are quite obvious. No doubt it will make web even more faster thereby enhancing user web browsing experience but at the same time there are few downsides too in having site speed as a ranking factor.
1: Faster sites will be given a preference. But how does site loading relate to the quality and credibility of the content? Many bigger sites with large following are not that fast loading one’s. Are they going to suffer for this?
2: Internet runs on advertisement and this new ranking factor discourages advertisements on website as they generally slowdown the site.
Google says that presently only 1% of the searches are affected by this site speed factor and the new searching algorithm currently holds only for searches made on Google.com in english language only.
If you have your own blog/site then you better start thinking about decreasing it’s load time. Here are the tools that you may find very useful in improving your site load performance: PageSpeed , YSlow, WebPagetest . Also if you have got a Google Webmaster account then headover to the “Site performance” section in it, for some useful insights on your site loadtime, by navigating to Labs > Site Performance in your Google webmaster account.
Do you think inclusion of site speed in Google ranking algorithm is a right move by Google? Do share your views in comments. We would love to hear from you.
Shahab khan is a Tech blogger from India & a founder of VirginTech. He blogs about Technology, internet, Social media, computer tips & tricks and Web 2.0. 
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I think its a great step by Google to make web more faster and also this will force webmasters to display less advertisements due to the site speed factor. I am really happy for this!
I Completely agree with your logic Jones. The site speed factor is definitely going to put some restrictions on the no of adverts on a blog.
BTW…thanks for making such a sensible comment!
Agree wtih Jones that it will make the web faster and I also feel the browsing experiance is slowed down a lot with those flash animated adverts. So this might actually be quite helpful in the long run.
You said it right man. These adverts are really slowing down the web. I have seen some blogs on which sidebar almost has no content and it is completely cluttered with flash adverts. I hope this will force every webmaster to trim down their blog adverts a bit.
Anyway thanks for commenting Aditya.
I was switching so many themes to optimize the speed of the website. I ran a test using page speed as well and found the theme and contents are one of the main reason for it.
This blogs readability is so cool. I like it a lot
Default DIY but the slight modifications u have done really makes the appearance much better. Have Fun !
Thanks for your lovely comment Robin. I am glad you liked the site interface.
Btw apart from YSlow , PageSpeed there is one more useful resource at http://www.tools.pingdom.com to figure out what’s actually slowing down your blog load time. It really helped me a lot in reducing the VirginTech load time.
At Rentals365, we have recently made a lot of changes, plus moved to a new high speed server. According to webmaster tools, we have gone from being faster than 50% of sites, to being faster than 90% of sites. This has not stopped Google from penalising our site for major search terms. We have dropped from regularly appearing on the first page to 3rd page.
I don’t think the speed factor has a lot to do with Google rankings – unless you take the view that we’d be doing even worse if not for the site being faster.
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