Website load speeds are now important

Over the last few weeks, there has been lots of talk about Google’s suggestion that page load speed may become a ranking factor in 2010.
While nothing has been confirmed yet, recent comments from Google Software Engineer, Matt Cutts make it seem increasingly likely, so we thought we'd provide you with all the information you need in order to prepare for this new ranking factor.

Why is Google Interested in Page Load Speed?
Google wants searching to be fast and efficient and for users to have a good experience. Google believes it would be fairer for faster sites to be higher up in the search results, so Web pages with faster loading times would have higher rankings than slower ones.
According to Matt Cutts, page load time is already a factor in AdWords advertising searches. He also suggests there is a strong push from within Google to make speed a quality factor in their search ranking guidelines.

How Will Speed Affect Rankings?
There are over 200 other ranking factors that are taken into consideration by Google, so just how important is a quick load time going to be?
With so many ranking factors to be considered, Google will be concentrating on the extremes, for example a page that take 60 seconds to load, or a page that takes a split second. Web pages with an average load time may therefore not initially be affected, however, as faster sites will be given a boost, your rankings may be affected eventually if much faster sites are pushed higher than yours.

How Are Load Times Measured?
According to Google, load time data will come from information sent by users of your site who have installed the Google toolbar and opted for enhanced features. This means it is representative of a global average of real users, which they feel is better than using a spider to gather the data.

Google have already added a page speed report to their set of free webmaster tools at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools, so you can obtain a summary of the following:
- How long your Web page takes to load
- A graphical history of your Web site's speed over the past few months
- How your load time compares to other sites

What Causes Slow Load Times?
There are two main factors that influence your page load times:
Hosting: Your site's load time is impacted by the quality of your host's connectivity, so Web hosts with slow servers or insufficient server space to cope with demand, and offshore hosts, for example, may put you at a disadvantage.Site Development: Poor site development including improper use of scripts, too many large images or media-heavy sites and invalid code can all slow down your page load times.