We’ve suspected for some time now that site speed was a factor in the Google algorithm and today Google has sort of confirmed it. The only strange thing is that they have confirmed it is currently only live on Google.com.
While site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point. We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing. If you haven’t seen much change to your site rankings, then this site speed change possibly did not impact your site.
This is interesting because a lot of the rumours are that this algorithm is live in the UK already but it seems the rumours might be wrong if you believe the wording of the post above.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
We’re a UK company, most of our business is US, our website is fully optimized for this market including our server location and domain name.
So if you’re a UK site with a US market this will effect you.
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Even if the change is only on google.com rather than google.co.uk, it will still affect UK sites.
Lots of people in the UK use google.com rather than the .co.uk version. And lots of people internationally use google.com to lead them to .co.uk sites.
However it doesn’t seem worth worrying about much. I keep reading that Google use over 200 signals to rank sites. This is probably a very minor one.
Still it is good to have a fast site – no one likes waiting too long for a page to load.
More comments from reviewmylifeThis is an interesting read considering the widespread belief that site speed is a key factor in Google rankings in the UK market. Many sites have been optimised on this basis in the belief that this is already a ranking factor, but obviously it is yet to go into effect.
Despite this fact optimising sites for speed is certainly good practice, as it increases the usability for those on slower connections, and reduces server load and bandwidth usage.
It’ll be interesting to see when site speed becomes a factor in UK rankings, and how much attention this will gain. I’ll be interested to read the comments regarding this.
It does make sense to include the technical capabilities of a website in their algoirthm as well. And even if at the moment this is only live for google.com as they say, obivously it will soon be for Uk as well. So we should all work on that as well, just to make sure we’re not caught off guard. And if it is already live, then all the more reasons to keep that as a priority.
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To be honest I agreed with Tarran and Reviewmylife. I also believe that site speed problem was in effect few weeks ago.
I have been working on a .co.uk site which had a loading time of 9 seconds, 3 weeks ago I compressed CSS files and Javascripts and this week I have seen good improvements on ranking on the homepage. No I have not done no link building or any onsite work before you ask me.
More comments from SauravIn our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point.
Nothing worse than bad site speed. Just a fun fact, if you ever need a yacht or boat shipped anywhere, Yacht Exports is your best bet. They have done a great job with me!
It will definitly affect UK sites. And Tim Diaz, I believe I will take a look at Yacht Exports. Thanks.
Great read, it google puts it out there it will affect all sites under it umbrella best thing to do is build around it and create a faster site.
It’s interesting that google has started using site speed in it’s search algorithms and i imagine it will only be a matter of time before it affects the UK google site.
As a front end designer I’m pleased that google recognise such an important factor in a website, speed affects usability and the general professional feel of the front-end. Sites that are well built should be higher up the rankings as opposed to a site that is slow and poorly optimised.
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