Website Speed - New Google Ranking Factor?

**bogart** · 14 November, 2009, 00:31 AM

Search Engine News reports that Matt Cutts described at Pub Con Las Vegas that Google may start using page speed as a factor in ranking sites.

Load time is already a quality factor for AdWords and there is a strong chance that speed will factor into the organic ranking algorithm.

**MeetHere** · 14 November, 2009, 03:02 AM

that's interesting..
thus this means we should not have images/videos/scripts on our site?

**bogart** · 14 November, 2009, 03:10 AM

Originally Posted by MeetHere

that's interesting..
thus this means we should not have images/videos/scripts on our site?

The load time would be just one of 200 factors that Google uses to rank your site. With images you should display thumbnails and not use the "size down" the images in the img tag. Videos shouldn't matter if you embed them so that the user plays them after the page loads.

I can see more of a problem with dynamic sites use a sql database that loads to slow.

**Kovich** · 14 November, 2009, 03:33 AM

This is good for those of us that also use Google to search for information.
At least if they implement this it will be less likely that we stumble upon slow-loading websites.

**crumblepie** · 14 November, 2009, 04:40 AM

That's kind of tricky though, my site never ever has the same speed - some days it's slow, some days it's fast. How is Google going to keep up with these kind of changes?

**MeetHere** · 14 November, 2009, 05:03 AM

Originally Posted by crumblepie

That's kind of tricky though, my site never ever has the same speed - some days it's slow, some days it's fast. How is Google going to keep up with these kind of changes?

lol, that's the hosting problem, not site load

buy a good reliable hosting VVVV

**garfish** · 14 November, 2009, 07:51 AM

ooohhh noooo!!! isn't it unfair now to sites like photo sharing sites?

**Aquarezz** · 14 November, 2009, 09:21 AM

Originally Posted by whatthehell

ooohhh noooo!!! isn't it unfair now to sites like photo sharing sites?

You should make sure that your image sharing site loads fast enough. Even with a lot of images on it. Eventually they can reduce the amount of images on the page

**amol_cool** · 14 November, 2009, 09:36 AM

Originally Posted by whatthehell

ooohhh noooo!!! isn't it unfair now to sites like photo
sharing sites?

Well yes you can say that image sites might be discriminated a bit against plain sites. But then again it has always been like that. Image sites have always been hard to optimize than plain text sites due to lack on content that search engines understand.

What's interesting to be seen is HOW-MUCH Google weighs this factor if included in those 200 factors.