According to Matt Cutts, the loading speed of sites may soon influence not only AdWords Quality Scores, but actual site rankings.
Google has been talking about speed for a while. Earlier in 2008, it was announced tyhat page load time was having a direct impact on Google Quality Scores for AdWords. Recently, in an interview with WebProNews, Google’s Matt Cutts said that speed may soon be a ranking factor for the SERPs, as well.
“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?’”
It is now expected that Google will soon begin taking page speed into consideration as a ranking factor. The speed of loading should be a consideration anyway, but if Google plans to involve speed in the rankings, this gives webmasters one more reason to get ahead of the competition with speedy test results.
Check the SubmitEdge SEO tips blog for ideas on how to increase your site page load times.
Tags: AdWords Quality Score, Google rankings, page loading speed