‘Site Speed’, we are told by Google in the above video, is a ranking factor. But as with any factor Google confirms is a ranking signal, it’s usually a small, ‘nuanced’ one.

A fast site is a good user experience (UX), and a satisfying UX leads to higher conversions.

How fast your website loads is a critical – but often completely ignored – element in any online business – and that includes search marketing and search engine optimisation.

Very slow sites are a bad user experience – and Google is all about GOOD UX these days.

 

How Much is ‘Website Speed’ a Google Ranking Factor?

‘How much is a very slow site a negative ranking factor’ is a more useful interpretation of the claim that ‘website speed is a Google ranking factor‘.

First – for I have witnessed VERY slow websites of 10 seconds and more negatively impacted in Google, and second, from statements made by Googlers:

We do say we have a small factor in there for pages that are really slow to load where we take that into account. John Mueller, GOOGLE

Google might crawl your site slower if you have a slow site. And that’s bad – especially if you are adding new content or making changes to it.

We’re seeing an extremely high response-time for requests made to your site (at times, over 2 seconds to fetch a single URL). This has resulted in us severely limiting the number of URLs we’ll crawl from your site.John Mueller, GOOGLE