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Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010
Algorithm Change Would Make Slow Sites Rank Lower169 comments Wednesday, December 23, 2009
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49 Comments
Speed
*I think if two sites are relevant to my search and one of them is quicker than the other one, I would prefer the quick one.* It will be important in the future, but not now. If information is very large, I agree then, but in other case - its does not matter!
Sounds Bad Doesn't It?
Search engines like Google do NOT read/view/download graphics, Flash, Java, Javascript, server side styles or other embeded multimedia from a Web page when indexing it. Their image indexer will retrieve images, but that's not their Web search indexer. So if this stupid algorithm was true you could create a NO text page with a half dozen lines of HTML and place a 100 million Gigabyte Flash ap on the page and you'll get rewarded by Google's stupid algorithm even though your page will take an hour to download and view. Then all you do is stuff your keywords and links into a noscript Tag and you beat Google up on this stupid algorithm. And let's say Google will download all this crap (not going to happen) and you include in your robots.txt denial of access to your /media/ directory like this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /media/
and then you placed your slow content there and reference to it:
<img src="/media/some_huge_graphic" />
Does it mean Google will now no longer "honor" our wishes and NOT enter this area? If this is the case, it means Google is no longer (never really was) a "friendly" search engine.
There is NO way Google is going to download everything and test to see how long a particular Web page is going to take to download for humans. It's just not feasible. In fact, if Google were to do this it would take months just to index and retrieve it's own youtube site. This is totally stupid and I will guarantee this will never happen. Common sense will tell you that. Is Matt on drugs?
If you review the video regarding this so called "speed" algorithm you'll soon find out that Google's main concerned is Asense and being able to quickly deliver those ads to users and a slow site means slow ad delivery and less money for Google. What? So this algorithm is so the faster sites get points so they can deliver more Google Adsense. What would happen if everyone removed Adsense from their Websites? Google would go bankrupt within 48 hours that's what would happen. It is Google's bread and butter and makes up the majority of their income.
The video is clear that Adsense and ad delivery is the real reason for even mentioning such an algorithm. It's also clear this is not happening and common sense tells you it never will. I wish Google would put in as much effort in search results delivery that it does with Adsense and other ad delivery. Their search engine would be a lot better that's for sure.
How Fast is Too Fast?
I agree we live in a "fast" paced world and giving "points" to businesses that serve you fast and with a smile is great in the brick-n-mortar world, but the Internet was never intended to be a competitive business platform. In fact, there are many of us on the Net doing research and collecting data all of which may be stored on slow servers or networks. If Google were to bury this information because the servers were/are slow would be a lot like Big Brother I think. If not Big Brother you could certainly call this algorithm "the rich get richer" as they called PageRank.
Search engines should not dictate relevancy based on any other factor than "relevance". Search engines need to invest more in understanding the words on the page and be able to know which pages are spam and which pages provide valuable content and are relevant to the search request being made. Google does this beautifully with Adsense and Adwords, but fails horribly as a search engine index. Now why is that? Maybe it's because search egines cost money where Adwords and Adsense make money. The better they can target those ads, the more money Google makes. Too bad they can't apply this same technology to their search engine. Instead they come up with simple and often exploited algorithms like "If they are fast sites, they get extra points!!!" OR "If they are a .com they get extra points" OR "If the keyword is in the domain name they get extra points!" OR "If there are popular sites linking to them (pagerank), give them extra points!". That's all simple grade level ranking algorithms and this idea is just another PageRank with a different title.
What? Another useless Google algorithm?
This is worse than PageRank! When is the algorithm "relevant" come to play? That's the day when Google becomes a real search engine and the day I'm waiting for. I'm personally tired of seeing all the same crap in their results. What about all that new relevant stuff where the site doesn't yet have a PageRank? That's the stuff I'm looking for. There are tens of thousands of new pages/sites on the Web daily, but Google won't give them the time of day because they are not yet "popular". I am NOT looking for the sites who are paying the most money to be seen on Google. Screw that! I want new, relevant and non-bias search results which Google seems to not be able to deliver.
Speed?
Speed could certainly be directly related to the site's traffic. How can speed dictate relevancy or quality? Speed dictates "money". The more money you have, the more powerful your server(s) and other resources. MSN Bing is FAST, but is it better than Google, Yahoo! or ScrubTheWeb? Good (not rich) sites are often sitting on virtual name based servers where overall traffic can affect the speed of the visit at that moment. Plus don't forget their is "net congestion" that plays a role here as well. It may take 20 hops before I resolve to Google, but someone in Sacremento California may only require 3 hops to get there. Does that mean Google is not good because of the hops it takes to get there? Absolutely not! What a STUPID algo!
Irony
My #1 page speed issue is outside ad servers and analysis services with laggy web servers. This makes Google's statements a bit ironic because google-analytics has been by far the worst of them. I put google-analytics and a couple of the major ad/analysis services into Adblock and suddenly 95% of slow pages and load issues vanished.
No PR but Speed?
I understand the point they are trying to make with this site speed stuff but find it a little odd that Google announces they are doing away with the Page Rank system but making speed a ranking factor? PR seemed to be a better ranking component than speed. Don't get me wrong I want sites to load fast too but there are a lot of variables that go into speed whereas content should be the most important ranking variable...
Speed is a big issue. If a
Speed is a big issue. If a page takes ages to load, then I'll frequently give in and go alsewhere. This is because slow sites tend to be those those are content-light and advert heavy - content tends to be text, adverts are graphics, often several levels/sites down.
Of course, with adblock turned up high, a hosts file with 70k entries, LSO objects disabled in flash, scripting and plugins disabled, and cookies deleted when I close a tab, I don't tend to see many adverts or much sign of intrusions into my privacy. :-)
Ian
Don't Panic!
More often than not the small changes Google make have little impact for the majority of web sites.
If you optimise well ensuring that the code on each page is as lean as possible and you don’t use too much Flash you’ll be find.
I think maybe Mr Cutts has set the cat amongst the pigeons again with this gem of information to keep us talking about Google (and Matt Cutts)
I think this does make sense
I think this does make sense as long as its implemented in moderation.. (hmmm google involved = no chance).
If it was implemented in moderation sites with excessive advertising would undoubtably feel the pinch.. some of the slowest ad's to load in my experience are ironically googles ad blocks.
ebays banners can take a while as well.
What a fine idea:)
If this can be done sensibly then I think it a good idea.
I don't particularly care if someone want's to host a basic site on their DSL or whatever. I see the problem being bloated sites and worst of all in my view are sites that simply suck up your whole computer (CPU) with moving graphics - usually adverts.
e.g.
http://www.independent.co.uk/ - for example uses up 100% of one CPU core (as long as the site is open), makes the fan on my laptop become audible, costs me electricity and pumps CO2 into the air at the power station.
Of course the ads can be easily subverted but I don't actually mind reasonable ads. If the new google approach fixed loons like these then I would be eternally grateful.
Here is an *idea* Mr Google - rate the sites on energy efficiency too:-) i.e. CPU requirement.
PS
Even without ads www.independent.co.uk uses a load of CPU, perhaps to drive the "Editors Choice" sliding image bar thingy. grrrrrrrr - fan on laptop whizzing up and down the scale.
Por que ahora
Me parece algo muy tonto, ahora que hay más ancho de banda hacen esos planes.
RE: What a silly idea
That's only half true.
If I search for a very specific thing, then content is what I prioritize, but if I search a general topic then speed is definitely part of the search.
There are plenty of sites with excellent content for broader searches and speed is definitely a reason for me to pick one site over the other. I would love for it to be incorporated into a search - especially if it meant sites with less ads and superfluous javascript that just lags and lags and (pause for loading) lags.
It seems pretty far to me
also right now the speed is a quality criterion. How many times have you left a site for a slow loading page?
Thats my point of view
you got a point!
i agree, speed might be a factor, with thousands and thousands of article writers writing about the same thing, search engine must come up with something else to consider wen it comes to their ranking.
they have just developed a
they have just developed a new protocol, named SPDY, designed to speed up web pages delivery. It may be that now by saying that ranking will be affected by speed they want to push developers to use their new protocol.
SPDY
Hi, Please can you give me some more info on this SPDY protocol and where or how can i get my hands on it.
Google have finally lost it.
I just tried the extensions recommended and they are useful but we are really getting mixed signals from google.
One one hand they are telling us to add bloated rich content like video which takes forever to download and on the other they are telling us to minify javascript and css which may make a difference of a couple of microseconds to the loading speed of a site.
I wish they would make up their mind, do they want rich content or do they want a return to 90's style dial up optimised pages?
I think it is certainly a
I think it is certainly a good thing. It is a relevance factor. Who wants to wait around for a webpage to load these days?
what an idiotic idea
Having inbound links is currently the most important factor in ranking well. If a site (whether it loads slowly or quickly) has a lot of natural inbound links already, doesn't that mean that users find the content on that page important enough to link to, regardless of the speed of the page? If a page really does load too slowly or has little content it won't get links to begin with and has therefore already been voted on, so to speak, by other internet users. This will just end up being another way for people to game the system, and will have the exact opposite effect of creating more relevant search results, just like all the other algorithm requirements that now plague the majority of pages on the web.
A lot of the people leaving comments are referring to slow loading pages that take minutes to load. Just what sites are you people visiting? I haven't had a problem with slow loading sites for the last three years at least. If you can't wait two seconds for a page to load that's your problem.
I agree this is a bit OTT.
I agree this is a bit OTT. What time differences are we talking? Would 2ms difference affect a site? What is the threshold? How many times do they test a site to check its speed? What if it's sustaining heavy traffic?
It's a large number of factors that we once again have to think about and could penalise legit sites.
It's good if Google get their brain power behind it but if they execute it poorly, it could cause issues.
No way...
No way...
So we will need to get the fastest and expensive webhosting in order to rank high? I don't see a point in that?... So the best way google starts selling webhost and pages will get better ranking... What a s...!!!
Once again google dictates
Once again google dictates how we make webpages. This is the reason why every site looks the same. Gone are the days when a webmaster built his pages for the users and not the search engines.
The link below is both sad and funny.
http://www.meangene.com/google/design_for_google.html
Load Time
Agree totally Brett. My clients are wanting more and more bells and whistles which is great for me as a designer to keep things interesting. Video is getting bigger and also pushed ahead by Google's YouTube. You can't get more bandwidth hungry than movies as far as I know. With broadband capabilities improving constantly people are expecting more multimedia and interaction from sites which ultimately means a slower load time.
Page speed ranking
Of course the speed is not everything. But is shoudl be a factor along with other criteria when ranking a website.
perhaps a level of importance in rank could include speed.
i.e
1. Content
2. Links to
3. Speed of site
4. Other factors i am sure are used in ranking.
If nothing else it will encourasge some of the big bloated sites to trim some of their code, maybe sacrifice 'pretty pictures' for speed. Some major sites I give up on. sl slow and I have a fast connection!
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Silliest
This is the most silliest of ideas and i think many blogger blogs would be knocked off.
Speed is an important factor
Yes, loading speed is an important factor of websites. But it can't be given much value as content. Bcoz content plays the role and readers will read whether pages load slow or fast. So I think atleast speed should not be a ranking factor in google.
Speed is important
Where we live there are no high speed options that are affordable for some folks so dial-up is all they have. Speed is very important to them. Also I do have high-speed and frankly if a site is what I consider too slow... I move on. I don't care if they have the greatest content in the world if the page takes more than 10 secs to give me something of importance... GOODBYE!
Google and site speed for ranking - BS!
How dumb is that!
If Google were ever to use such a stupid factor as load speed as a measure of quality then it would be doomed! Besides with the number of pages that regularly change their size and therefore load speed
just more hype from Cutts to deflect from the real changes!
Internet speed is about the underlying platform framework and faster web will only be delivered by faster network protocols not page load times. Read http://www.the-system.org
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