Google confirms: Site speed is a (small) factor
Ian Lurie Apr 9 2010
Back in November I wrote that Google was likely using site load speed as a performance factor.
They just confirmed that with their blog post Using Site speed in web search ranking.
Note: They said it’s only a factor in about 1% of searches. They also said they just launched this factor a few weeks back – I’m not sure I buy that.
Regardless, get your site running faster. It’s now an official ranking factor.
And, of course, there are all of the secondary effects like better indexation of your site, more customers, not looking like an idiot, etc..
Ian Lurie
CEO
Ian Lurie is CEO and founder of Portent Inc. He's recorded training for Lynda.com, writes regularly for the Portent Blog and has been published on AllThingsD, Forbes.com and TechCrunch. Ian speaks at conferences around the world, including SearchLove, MozCon, SIC and ad:Tech. Follow him on Twitter at portentint. He also just published a book about strategy for services businesses: One Trick Ponies Get Shot, available on Kindle. Read More
2 Comments
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Its bloomin tough to keep up with what helps with the Google rankings.
But wanting your site to be fast is surely in everyone’s interest and although it shouldn’t be too much of a factor in deciding relevancy to the searcher we all get frustrated with slow loading sites.
Andy
I think they say 1% of searches because they take into account that big sites are heavier but on the other hand, they usually have more reliability and relevant content than smaller sites. There’s more flexibility to optimize for speed on smaller sites and consequently, less reason to leave them loading slowly.