Coming to the AdWords keyword diagnostic section near you, or at least your management console, should be the ability to view how Google perceives your landing page load times.

To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, speed is good. As SERoundtable noted, those load times mean money to advertisers.

Put up a landing page that loads faster than ones on comparable servers in a geographic region, and the keyword bid pricing should be favorable. Subjecting visitors to a slow page means a worse quality score.

Google, of course, will punish poor performers. Slow landing pages reflect poorly on the user experience, which people will blame on Google. Even Google has limits on what it will put up with in exchange for money, as has been observed during their push to encourage better all-around quality from their advertisers.

“Starting sometime in mid-June, the landing page load time score will impact your overall quality score and may cost you a lot of money. So be prepared,” SERoundtable said. Now’s the time to get ready; waiting for June to deal with an average or worse report won’t be any fun for webmasters.

Research firm Fathom Online posted its latest results from its Keyword Pricing Index. After touching $1.43 for an average keyword bid in Q4 2005, the price lowered during the first quarter to $1.39.

The company cited the end of seasonal advertising as being responsible for the dip in average bid pricing. However, the market for online advertising still looks good to Fathom.

“Search marketing is growing at a robust 25 percent this year, and price stability helps that growth” said Matt McMahon, VP Marketing Services at Fathom. “As advertisers see a more predictable keyword bidding environment, confidence in the channel grows and advertisers continue to invest further in search marketing.”

Fathom tracks over 20,000 keywords across 12 categories in building its Index. The company does caution that its “keyword averages are reliable indicators for media buyers, but are not to be considered proxies for the financial state of the search industry.”

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.