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Is Load-Speed the Ultimate Google Ranking Factor?

Last week’s post about load speeds
(http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/
using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html)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
remove 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?

In an interview (http://videos.webpronews.com/2010/04/01/
google-talks-quality-caffeine-spam-buzz-and-push/)less than two
weeks ago, 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 (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en),
I’ve had an opportunity 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 was never 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.