There's been a lot of news heading our way from Google recently. First they unveil the test version of a new search architecture called Google Caffeine. Then Caffeine goes live on one data center to be fully rolled out right after the coming holidays. And now we get to know that Google is about to inject a new ranking factor into the algorithm – site speed. This is huge news for anyone with a website so let's take a closer look.

The news came from Matt Cutts, head of Google's anti-spam team. In an interview to WebProNews Matt said:

“If you're a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don't want that as much”

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What this means is that Google will be pushing faster sites higher in the search results, whereas slower sites will find it harder to rank.

When does speed factor go into play?

There's no official statement from Google yet as to when site speed will be introduced as a ranking factor. It seems reasonable for Google to roll out the new factor together with Google Caffeine which goes live in early 2010. The whole Caffeine update is mostly about speed: indexing speed, speed of generating search results and the overall experience of fast search. So it makes sense for Google to introduce the speed ranking factor in Caffeine.

In fact it doesn't really matter when exactly Google starts using the speed factor. What matters is whether you'll be ready for the game changer. Since we've got the early news, there's enough time for you to check your site's load time and make the necessary changes before the shift in the algo takes place. And here's how you can do it.

Is your website fast enough?

Obviously, website speed can't be treated as an absolute metric. The average site load time will largely depend on the niche. For example photo stocks and video sites will generally take more time to load then, say, news blogs and text-oriented websites. So, site speed is a relative metric that can only be applied to competing sites in one niche. You shouldn't really bother to become the fastest site on the planet. What you really should care about is whether your site's loading speed catches up with the competition.

Check Your Site's Speed

It's only been a couple of days since we heard the news about the whole speed factor thing and there's already a special tool out there that lets you check your site's loading time and compare it against the 10 top ranked websites for your keywords. It's WebSite Auditor, an onpage optimization tool by Link-Assistant.Com

This SEO tool is designed for onpage optimization and top 10 analysis. It allows you to analyze top 10 ranked websites for your niche so that you can get a better idea why these guys rank on top and what onpage optimization tactics you can borrow from them to make your content work better. The new version of the tool also lets you run a quick speed test to see how your website stacks up to the competition (this feature is available in the free version of the tool).

I ran a sample check for site-reference.com using the keyword "search engine optimization articles" and here're the results.




As you can clearly see the loading time of site-reference.com is almost 40% faster than the competition's average. It does lose a bit to a couple of websites on the list but the overall site's performance is excellent. It means that the coming change should give site-reference.com a push in the rankings.

And what about your site?

Test your site speed and check whether you're ready for the new ranking algorithm. Download this free on-page optimization tool and find out whether it's time to speed up your website.

Property in Turkey writes: google results showing how a website speeds fast...

2:48:19 Wed Dec 30 2009 CST


Paul writes: I think a speed metric within Google’s indexing algorithm is a very positive thing.

It will encourage companies to think about speed and discourage them from using excessive amounts of 3rd party media such as poor performing adverts and flash based content, etc.

I’m sure the speed metric will only count as a small plus towards page ranking and content will always be the primary measure.

At http://www.getmecooking.com we are implementing features to make the site as fast as possible – much faster than other large cooking sites. See how fast the recipe page dynamically loads 20 recipes at a time. Other sites such as http://haystack.com also do this.

10:54:43 Wed Dec 23 2009 CST


Petr writes: Website Auditor gets site speed data from alexa... but Alexa has this data outdated. On many our sites Alexa shows site speed time year the same without any change and Website Auditor reports are inaccurate.

7:59:50 Tue Dec 15 2009 CST


David writes: I'm kinda having a hard time getting my head around this, i wonder how much of a factor it will play? what if someone scrapes someone elses content but makes it load much faster, are they gonna get the google traffic?

13:12:13 Thu Dec 3 2009 CST


Lyndas9254 writes: Great article with great information. I am taking a look at this now to see how it may help my business.

9:54:10 Tue Dec 1 2009 CST


Alan writes: Link-Assistant.Com has some great tools, my only reservation about its data is whether it tells you where it is measuring the page download speed from (e.g. west coast/east coast US?) - e.g. you would be concerned about your page download times primarily in the countries where you do business, so for example SEOChat.com might take 8secs to download when measured in the US but might take 16secs for a visitor in the UK, 23secs for a visitor in South Africa - now...if they do business in these countries this obviously would be a figure you would like to be aware of because then they could address what is obviously a barrier to business i.e. slow page load.

So my issue with these tools is that they can sometimes be too generalistic and give you a false sense of security when your homepage may take double or triple the time to download in other major countries where you do business. Also with this tool I guess you're only measuring the page load of the homepage? Well...for my eCommerce site I really need to know the download times for my major product landing pages as well as these are major search engine entry level pages.

So, my point is these tools can be dangerous enough by giving you too little information - if you've got the dosh get a specific web performance monitoring software (can't recommend any but there's lots out there). Again, if you've got the dosh we use a website accelerator called aptimize WAX at work and it's just incredible for speeding up page load speed. One day, when i'll have the dosh, i'll know what to do for my own sites :0


16:31:03 Mon Nov 30 2009 CST


DIGIDY writes: Hi, I already own and using Website Auditor software v. 1.9, but I cannot find in report site speed results you write about. Are you sure, that is Website Auditor from Link-Assistant.com?

9:31:09 Mon Nov 30 2009 CST


Anurag writes: Thanks to site-reference which provides the facilities to aware the Google updates and using this we try to maintain ranking.
Anurag

3:58:06 Mon Nov 30 2009 CST


Kumpulan resep writes: Ohh... Man, thanks for your info. I think my blogs is very slow. Can you give me an idea for make faster my blog? Check my blog.

2:25:21 Sun Nov 29 2009 CST


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