Google to factor site speed into search rank

Webmasters, be aware and start working to speed up your sites

Google announced on Friday that side speed now affects Google search ranking.  The search giant has been making efforts to speed up the Internet and this is just another move in that direction.  

The company made several arguments towards why it believes this is important, mainly that recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs.  It also reinstated that, "faster sites create happy users...when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there."  

If you're worried your site is slow and your ranking will fall, don't be too alarmed.  Google said site speed doesn't carry as much weight as the relevance of a page, emphasizing that fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the new site speed signal.  Also, this new implementation only applies for users searching in English.  

Although the change may not be that noticeable just yet, Google did emphasize for site owners to start being aware of their site speeds.  The company offered a set of free tools Webmasters can use to evaluate their speeds, check them out on the blog if you're interested.  

Beyond this new implementation, Google is really doing some serious work at speeding up the Web.  It's in the process of launching some experimental fiber optic networks across a few select communities across the US.