Charles Preston's Blog

I have heard from a few different sources now including an interview with Matt Cutts that web page load speed may factor into Google ranking in the near future. The consensus is that it will factor in this year (2010).

Google has released a Firefox plugin called “Google Page Speed” , you need to have the firebug plugin in order for it work. Essentially it analyzes the load speed of all the elements on a web page such as images, CSS, Javascript, etc and then makes recommendations on how to decrease load time.

An interesting development to be sure as Google has traditionally focused only on website content and link popularity. Now it seems they are branching off into web page usability as a factor in ranking. I guess it makes sense as Google’s goal is to provide the most relevant content for a particular search and the speed at which that content can be accessed is an integral part of that equation.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 1:00 am and is filed under Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.