Website Speed May Be a New Ranking Factor

Throughout 2009, we’ve heard a lot from Google about the importance of speed. For example, “Google Caffeine”? Even the word ” Caffeine ” gives off some semblance of speed in itself. Google is striving to make the web a faster place. It was only a matter of time before they decided that page load time would carry some weight in the old Google algorithm.

In a recent interview, Matt Cutts spoke about page load speed as a ranking factor.

“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,” says Cutts. “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?'” he says.

It’s fair to assume from these comments that in the near future we may see yet another algorithm change in favor of page load speed. Although he did not say this outright, it could be safe to say.

So, if you’re like me, you already optimize photos and content for faster loading. If not, you may want to begin this practice, so you’ll be ahead of the game when Google makes the change.

~Stephen