In Google’s effort to help speed up the web, it’s putting more emphasis on page load speed, but is it at the same time creating an unleveled playing field for smaller sites?
The latest addition to the Labs section of Google Webmaster Tools is the Site Performance tab which provides insights on load speed and benchmarks. The information is gathered via users that have the Google Toolbar installed and in addition are opted-in to its enhanced features.
Google has previously mentioned that it will award fast loading pages with an edge in the SERPs, and recently Matt Cutts hinted that slower sites might get actively penalised. Regardless of Google’s stance, it’s of course always in every webmaster’s best interest to provide a speedy site as part of a good user experience.
Below is Google’s performance chart and analysis of this very site – looks like I need to consider some caching or hosting solutions, to minimise the risk of loosing out on organic rankings.
On average, pages in your site take 3.0 seconds to load (updated on Nov 17, 2009). This is slower than 51% of sites. The chart below shows how your site’s average page load time has changed over the last few months. For your reference, it also shows the 20th percentile value across all sites, separating slow and fast load times.
This highlights the argument against including page loading speed as a search engine ranking factor. Since personal and/or small, but possibly highly relevant sites, are likely to use shared hosting solutions with lower performance than big sites with dedicated servers and pipes, it creates an unleveled playing field. This could also create a poorer user experience, since users are likely more interested in quality content than the mere speed of the site. However, exactly how this is to be implemented into the algorithm is yet to be seen.
What’s your view on page load speed as a ranking factor?
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Agree that this creates an un-level playing field for those that can’t afford the best hosting environments, not to mention potentially penalizing sites that are media rich. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on my post on the same topic… (my name is probably hyperlinked above)
>> Jared
Enjoyed your post. A thought – since more people are using the web on-the-go via mobile phones etc with dodgy 3g connections at best.. speed is increasingly important, but as we both agree – it will make it difficult for smaller sites.
I’m paying something ridiculously low like £1 a month for this site’s hosting at one.com – but that doesn’t say a thing about the value of the content.
…Perhaps google is branching out to Web hosting? Not too far fetched considering it’s short urls and dns service to speed up the web.