Site Speed is Now a Search Ranking Factor for Google Search

Categories: Site Optimization Tips, Web development

Google has officially made site speed one of the factors for search rank (there are over 200 ranking factors). So now is a good time to read the WordPress site optimization tips post and put some plan of action in place.

Now, you have no reason to go into a panic mode just yet. Optimizing your site for better performance is always a good thing from a usability point of view but Google has indicated that only about 1% of search queries and even fewer search results will be affected from this change at this stage.

There are several research statistics that show that decreasing your site load time on pages leads to an increase in sales which we all want. There are three things to take away from what Google is doing.

Speeding up your website is a good general practice. Think about how many times you have waited for a site to load. When the site takes too long you usually end up closing the browser and moving on.
This change will have a small impact on most sites, so don’t panic.
Small constructive changes can have a direct impact on improving your site and user experience. Instead of wasting time where it is not needed you can focus on some easy, small steps that can improve how users view your site.

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#1 by Ashton on May 19, 2011 - 11:43 pm

Thanks for your valuable tips

#2 by Plumber Baldock on January 4, 2011 - 7:20 am

Very nice post. Keep sharing.

#3 by Mas Joe on July 14, 2010 - 11:38 am

yes speed on site this factor for ratting in google.com tahnks
.-= Mas Joe´s last blog ..Should You Keep Changing Your Web Hosting =-.

#4 by Ayush Kumar on June 28, 2010 - 9:36 am

Its all about how we can make the website more user friendly and search engine friendly too. If site will load fast that means users and search engines too can access website fast.Thanks for sharing this wonderful information.
.-= Ayush Kumar´s last blog ..Tim Berners Lee – Father of HTML =-.

#5 by Umesh on June 17, 2010 - 3:35 pm

I am wondering if this is the reason for google to crawl my site. Sometime google crawls more frequently and sometime doesn’t.

I don’t know what’s going on.
.-= Umesh´s last blog ..Night around Memorial parks, Washington DC =-.

#6 by admin on May 11, 2010 - 9:28 am

If you log into your Google Webmaster Tools then it will have a graph showing you if your site is slow or fast.

#7 by Bearings on May 11, 2010 - 6:11 am

It’s said google care about site speed, but what’s speed google accept?
.-= Bearings´s last undefined ..Response cached until Wed 12 @ 11:07 GMT (Refreshes in 23.95 Hours) =-.

#8 by babor_7uiu on May 10, 2010 - 4:21 am

I think I’ve read this somewhere that’s why it’s good to optimize, in my case wordpress cache plugins, to speed up the loading.

#9 by CJ on April 27, 2010 - 5:35 am

Been using Yslow (Firefox addon) for a while now, really helped to optimize the speed of my website. Just have to be patient how it influences the rankings.

#10 by hoshi on April 26, 2010 - 3:47 am

ah okay, thank you for the info!
.-= hoshi´s last blog ..Immediate Dream- Be a Children’s Book author =-.

#11 by Janet on April 20, 2010 - 8:53 pm

I fully agree with Google’s choice to use site speed to help calculate search rank. I can’t stand sites that take forever to load and usually end up leaving the site.

#12 by Stamping on April 20, 2010 - 4:57 am

I have a similar problem, my site used to be PR4 but now only PR2. I checked from webmaster central but it did not tell me anything..

#13 by admin on April 17, 2010 - 9:54 pm

If you page rank dropped from 2 to 0 then it could mean that Google is penalizing your site for something. Now, the reasons list is very long (e.g. using text link ads, linking to bad site etc.) so the best way to find out the issue is to log into Google’s Webmasters central (http://www.google.com/webmasters). Usually it tells you what is wrong with your site and then you can fix it and Google will automatically pick up your fixes.

#14 by hoshi on April 17, 2010 - 11:16 am

why is that my Page rank is back to zero? I was already in Pagerank 2.
.-= hoshi´s last blog ..The Proposal =-.