Page load speed may be in Google 2010 algorithm

by Patrick Altoft on November 17, 2009

In a video interview for Web Pro News Matt Cutts has given a clear hint that page load speed will be a part of Googles algorithm next year. Page speed is already part of the AdWords quality score algorithm but until now it’s not directly been part of the main search algorithm.

We’ve always seen the effects of very slow hosting with poor crawl rates and a lack of deep indexing but Google has traditionally not been giving a boost to faster sites.

Historically, we haven’t had to use 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. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don’t want that as much.

I think a lot of people in 2010 are going to be thinking more about ‘how do I have my site be fast,’ how do I have it be rich without writing a bunch of custom javascript?’

Video available below, the page speed part is 2 minutes 35 seconds in.

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.

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karl 17 Nov 2009 at 1:45 pm

Keep up Patrick…

Old news already.

Even the Digitalpoint muppets are up to date on this.

What happened to your sharp on the ball posts, or are you turning into a regular ‘rehaser of news’ Blogger.

tag44 17 Nov 2009 at 2:30 pm
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Yeah its an old news and i have read it a week ago in webpronews and some other SEO blogs, so be update with latest news as it comes, Patrick, its an request from all the regular readers of this blog.

More comments from tag44
John Paul 17 Nov 2009 at 3:31 pm

Im glad I installed the WP Super Cache plugin last week :)

Golden Blogger 19 Nov 2009 at 5:46 pm

Thanks for sharing!Its good for the public..
I hope all like that …

Keep going

Stephen Webb 27 Nov 2009 at 10:02 am

I’m not surprised to see this development in Google’s search algorithm, and think this could definitely be a good thing for the web in general. Poorly built sites can cause havoc for the end user, with slow download speeds, displaying incorrectly and usage of old technologies (such as tables)! Having Google give extra focus on well built sites that have had a lot of effort put into their end user experience is certainly a good thing.

What will be interesting to see here is how much a difference having a well built, fast site will make to your Google listings. If this is only a matter of a single position this would hardly be worthwhile, but if Google designates sites multiple positions higher then we could see a lot of sites being re-worked and re-built very soon!

With the ongoing development of Web 2.0 I wonder what other factors will be coming into the search algorithm next year. An interesting article, thanks for posting.

patrick 21 Dec 2009 at 10:45 am

that’s true- but what would be any eCommerce or flash websites

Website Design Georgia 29 Apr 2010 at 8:53 am

Great post ..keep up the good work..

{ 1 trackback }

Google PageRank Speed improvements | Douglas Radburn - douglasradburn.co.uk
12.08.09 at 1:39 pm

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