Is Load-Speed the Ultimate Google Ranking
Factor
15th aPRIL, 2010 11:11 AM
(By Sasch Mayer)
Last week's post
about load speeds on Google's Official Webmaster Central
Blog finally confirmed the rumors which have abounded across
the SEO sector for months - that Google now factors a site's
load-speed when assessing its search ranking.
And while this announcement, which comes as no surprise to
those with their finger on the Google pulse, has drawn a few
favorable responses from blog commenters, the overwhelming
majority of readers have expressed concerns and doubts about
the soundness of Google's approach. At the forefront of these
were questions primarily regarding the exact magnitude of
any negative ranking impact carried by slow page loading speeds.
Alongside these came a large number of complaints about the
fact that Google's own Analytics script is a known load-time
decelerator, and about the almost glacially slow rendering
times of AdSense code.
When read together, many comments give one the impression
that webmasters are becoming apprehensive to the point of
stampeding, as is usually the case when Google does something
new. Indeed, the overall consensus seems to be that load-speeds
are about to become the ultimate criterion for search ranking
performance, and that this will cause major ranking damage
to the average website. One commenter even went so far as
to announce that he/she will drop all Analytics and AdSense
scripts because their slow performance will now obviously
ruin his/her website's performance.
But are these worries actually valid, or are they just the
latest manifestation of unfounded Google-noia to hit the SEO
sector?
Before I get around to addressing the question, I must admit
that I knew this was coming some time ago. Consequently I
was able to line up a few experiments on two sites from my
own stable in an effort to gauge any real-term ranking impact
once Google started to implement its changes.
What did I personally find?
Despite the fact that both websites are rich in graphics and
content, both have not been updated regularly since late last
year, and neither is what you might call a fast loader, I
found absolutely no detrimental ranking effects for either
site during the past couple of months. In fact, the slower
of the two websites (average load-time 5.3 secs) actually
experienced noticeable SERP improvements in the past week
or so, which makes me wonder if there's not more to all this
than simple load-speeds. That, however, is another story.
Of course mine is only a limited sample, and a far from conclusive
one. It is, however, one of many indicators one can find if
one looks around. And with that in mind, let's return to the
question at hand. Are webmasters' fears justified or ill-founded?
As usual, and as I've touched on already, each and every time
Google does something new, it invariably precipitates a spate
of trepidation and panic among the world's webmaster and SEO
crowds. Perfect cases in point include the implementation
of the 'Nofollow' attribute, and the announcement that buying
and selling links for PR was no longer ok, both of which together
sparked major outcries throughout the online communities.
And from what I've seen, the initial knee-jerk reaction that
the Site-Speed announcement will certainly spell the end of
the Internet as we know it is no different.
But seriously, although load-speeds are now a ranking factor,
at least for English-language searches on Google.com, let's
not forget that it's still just a single one of over two-hundred
signals Google uses to assess a site's rankings. And let's
also remember that Google is first and foremost about delivering
relevant results, just as it always has been.
After all, what use is serving results from the fastest sites
on the web, if those sites don't actually contain the information
the user is looking for?
Matt Cutts himself said: "People shouldn't stress
out too much about Site-Speed, and the reason is that we're
always going to care first and foremost about quality. How
good is a page for users?" Addressing Site-Speed's
function in assessing SERPs, he also said: "Don't
think it's going to be the largest of the two-hundred factors."
These statements are more indicators...
As part of my daily involvement in Google's Webmaster Help
Forum, I've had an opportuníty to keep track of
developments during the past five months or so since the Site-Speed
topic was first raised. There, a number of highly enlightening
discussions with the forum's other Top Contributors and Google
staff, along with the general speculations of a great many
visitors, have provided quite a clear picture of Site-Speed's
role in the overall scheme of things. It is a role which,
as is usually the case, focuses on a better user experience.
Let's face it, it's no great secret that the average visitor's
attention span is five seconds or less, and that long loading
times do tend to make users hit the back button. And that's
exactly where Site-Speed comes in. It wasn't ever designed
to be the ultimate Google ranking factor; it merely provides
a little extra fine-tuning by casting the deciding vote in
cases where information of identical or similar quality is
available on multiple websites and needs to be ranked with
a better user experience in mind.
As a last word about load-times I would have to say that there
are a large number of reasons to make sure your web pages
load in a sensible amount of time. These should, however,
be focused on your visitors, not orbiting around your Google-noia.
About The Author
Sasch Mayer has been a writer and web promotion
consultant for well over a decade. In 2008 he was nominated
as a Top Contributor at Google's own Webmaster Central forum,
where he still assists webmasters world-wide address a multitude
of technical and promotional issues. Professionally, he provides
a wide range of services, including professional keyword
research, and help with W3C Compliance problems.
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