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Google Now Includes Site Speed in Search RankingsMay 7, 2010 – 8:53 am |
 Abdul Fattah Ismail |
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On April 9, Google and their tireless innovators introduced a new tool for their search algorithms named site speed. Site speed measures how fast a page uploads after the initial click. The publicity has not been strong, but this will prove invaluable to agencies like Blueliner who specialize in search engine optimization. A faster site not only saves time for the host, but also makes a customer more likely to spend significant time browsing for information along with products. As we all know, saving time saves operating costs. Google includes these free tools to gauge your site’s speed:
- Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
- YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
- WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
- In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below. We’ve also blogged about site performance.
Blueliner CEO Arman Rousta talks about the benefits of this update for Blueliner clients:
“The site speed algorithm reaffirms what we have always told our clients regarding SEO – and that is ‘build a functional, user-friendly website, and you will get good SEO results.’ SEO is all about balance – between images and content, between information and usability. We have always tested for website load times and encouraged speed optimization, so our existing clients are already well-positioned for this algorithm shift. Having Google make the announcement supports our insistence on the importance of well thought-out web design and user experience issues in the SEO process.”
