Google announced the launch of some new metrics for the Site Speed report in Google Analytics. The metrics are aimed at giving webmaster a better understanding of how they can improve their website performance. Speed, we know, is a ranking …

It’s become clear that site speed and performance have become increasingly important on the web, particularly with Google. The company has made a plethora of announcements over the past year or two directly related to making the web faster in general. Most recently, for example, Google announced mod_pagespeed, a tool for webmasters to use to automatically optimize their sties. "It’s like Page Speed, but makes the changes automatically," Google told WebProNews.

Website owners and bloggers, take heed: you don’t need to stop whatever you’re doing and eliminate all tools, videos, and pictures from your properties.  But as soon as it’s convenient, you may want to (re)check how quickly things load, because Google announced this afternoon that it’s begun to factor site speed into its search rankings.

About a month ago, WebProNews interviewed Google’s Matt Cutts, who suggested that page speed may soon become a ranking factor in the world’s most popular search engine. Speed has been a consistent theme with the company over the past year or so, with the release of various tools and announcements. It has become quite evident that Google places a great deal of importance on speeding up the web. With that in mind, it’s not hard to see why Cutts’ suggestion could soon become a reality.

Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. Has it occurred to you that how fast your page loads may have a direct effect on how your site ranks in Google?