The biggest news to come out of PubCon was the fact that Google are introducing a new ranking factor into their algorithm: speed. The speed in which your site loads will become detrimental to how well your site can rank. This is probably not that surprising as Google have made it no secret that they want search to be a lot faster in the past.
A lot has been made of this recent change with many people confused over why loading time should be a ranking factor as lets face it speed does not equals relevancy and that’s what Google’s all about. However I have to say that the algorithm change is very much needed.
If I had to make a guess (and this is a wild stab in the dark) I would say that over 60% or more of sites on the web load at decent speeds already. What this announcement does however is bring those 40% or so other sites that load slowly into check by given them a solid reason to improve their loading times. This is why I agree with what Barry Schwarz mentions over at Search Engine Land in that “speed would not be a tremendously weighed factor” in ranking determinant, “unless the site takes 90 seconds to load” and it is these sites which is most likely Google’s reasoning behind this algorithm change.
There is almost no excuse these days for poor loading times. Poor loading times is a product of the dark ages of the web and I think this algorithm change is Google’s way of taking a firm grip on the web and dragging it into the modern age. We all want to get faster information and nothing is more irritating then sites that take ages to load, the next step is faster internet connection…