Google Loves Speed

Google Adds Page Load Time to Search Results

Google Adds Page Load Speed to Search Algorithm

Search Engine giant, Google, recently added web site load time to it’s search engine algorithm.  Until now Google mainly used page relevance (how relevant the page is to the search) and authority (number of quality inbound links) to rank pages in their search results.  Now how fast the page loads will help determine page rank.

Trust is very important to Google.  They really want you to find the information you are searching for quickly and easily, so this only makes sense.  According to Google’s research, the slower a site responds to a click, the less time a visitor will spend there.  Think about how you use the internet, do you get impatient waiting for a page to load?  I know I do.  Increasing the load speed of your site will only make user experience better.

This adds a new challenge for web developers.  Not only does a site need to have lots of great information and be easy to navigate, now it needs to be fast.  Here are a couple of tools to help analyze the speed of your site.

Page Speed –  A Firefox/Firebug add-on from Google

Yslow –  A Firefox/Firebug add-on from Yahoo

Even with this new element to Google’s search algorithm, relevance and authority are still the most important elements to search.  You still need to be conscious of seo and develop your presence around the web (Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc).   The addition of site speed will only affect a small portion of search result.

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