Page speed load times in Google
Ok maybe this is just me being cynical, but when Google said that page load times in Google would be a factor in organics I decided to make my site faster. In fact we got it down to 700ms pretty quick I thought. Then I thought hmmm that test was a server near where my server is located, wonder what would happen if I picked a server in London or San Francisco ?? results are in :
Manchester load times 723ms :
London load times 1.1s still not bad ( I just want to be around 2 seconds) :
San Francisco load times :
poo! that’s all I can say
Dave
Shark SEO 1264 days ago
http://sharkseo.comSo if Google starts to use page load times in its algorithm but still crawls from the US, surely only US sites will get a bit more of a boost in the SERPs?
Maybe it’ll help knock out the Australian results from the UK SERPs…
Richard Vaughan 1264 days ago
smush.it reckons you could still save 4.64kb on your main logo
http://smushit.zenfs.com/results/c04f9e8a/smush/_logo.png
Allan Stewart 1264 days ago
They will probably use that in their algo i.e. the if crawl = fast rank high if not so fast dampen SERPS a bit, and so on.
CDN will help.
John 1264 days ago
I would have thought google would crawl from places other than just their HQ? I presumed they would have data centres all over the world.
I’m in the UK and adding caching to my site so it is essentially just serving up static html has really improved my ranking. Well, i think it was that that did it…
Big City News 1264 days ago
http://bigcityinformer.comHmm, doesn’t the page load time depend on many other things as well? Different browsers might give different results? What about the time of the day?
Is there a site where this can be tested properly?
Thanks
Allan Stewart 1264 days ago
Yes ofcourse they have data centres all over the world.
Edgar Granados 1264 days ago
http://edgargranados.esThis works like the “Qaulity Score” Adwords, Google takes the average download time for sites that are hosted in places close to your host.
If your site is in Spain, Google will make the average download time for all sites that are hosted in Spain
more info in my blog in Spanish: http://edgargranados.es/tiempo-de-descarga-factor-seo-ranking-de-google/16/
devendra 1264 days ago
Interesting! What service did you use to check response time?
Paul 1264 days ago
http://csshowto.comAnyone know what tool/website Dave used to carry out the speed tests, seems like a handy site to add to the collection
Peter Unitt 1264 days ago
http://blog.infoservegroup.comYou would assume that it would base the ping on your location or something like that.
I doubt the load speed will be too important in terms of SEO though
TractorFan 1264 days ago
http://www.tractorfan.netI’m already looking into having a dedicated server on each continent. It’ll be a pain to manage, but I hope it pays off.
TractorFan 1264 days ago
http://www.tractorfan.netRight now I have a server located in Germany, which has seperate domains set up for 16 countries, all around the world. The site is ranking well in Germany and all countries around it, but the ranking decreases as the distance increases.
I think the load time already is a factor in the ranking algorithm.
Roger 1264 days ago
It will be very tricky for Google to implement this as David’s results show the speed of download is not a constant. Perhaps they will have ceiling figure if you site is slower than that then you might be pushed down a few places.
Google Release Site Performance Tools via Webmaster Tools 1263 days ago
[...] latest release certainly confirms the general feeling from SEO’s that page load will become a ranking factor in 2010. Google certainly [...]
Amelia Vargo 1263 days ago
I have to agree with TractorFan – load times already play a part in rankings.
But, Dave please tell us the tool you’re using to test load times.
Dave 1263 days ago
http://www.djb31st.co.ukCan’t work out exactly which speed test dave is using here.. Few good examples of speed test sites can be found here though
http://seogadget.co.uk/tools-to-speed-up-your-site/
Especially like http://www.webpagetest.org/
Jeff Sebring 1263 days ago
http://theoreticalmass.comThis seems to confirm why Matt Cutts suggests having a server local to where your target audience is.
I think the various cloud services out there are about to get a big boost in business.
Michael J. Cohen (mjc) 1262 days ago
http://325i.orgreduce the number of HTTP requests, since round-trip time is the biggest factor in this particular instance.
move your static content (images, js) to multiple hostnames (IE6 is 2 connections per hostname, so if you have 10 images, use 5 hostnames – but there are ways to benchmark this).
use a CDN (amazon cloudfront is fast, cheap, and fairly easy to set up), so that images and javascript (which create most of your load times) are loaded from a server near to the user.
http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/ has some great resources, also, and maybe check out webpagetest.org (provided by AOL)
Justine 1262 days ago
http://www.mesrianilaw.com/Page load time not only affects the rankings but also the visitors of the site. If a website loads slowly, visitors tend to search for other sites where they can get the information they need quickly.
SEOmium 1262 days ago
http://www.seomium.com/Actually this post came just in time after Google announced its’ public DNS. Quite a coincidence.
Claus Heinrich 1262 days ago
http://www.da.clausheinrich.comSame load differences I have. Time to move hosting provider for several of my domains to fit the local audience.
Better do it now than later, as this clearly will have a direct impact on your rankings
Driveways 1260 days ago
http://www.crystalclearideas.co.uk/Surely a couple of milliseconds here and there will not effect the ranking of a site and its more relating to sites what take 15 – 30 seconds or longer to load
Required Reading – 12/15/09 « I want my dream SEO job! 1251 days ago
[...] Page Speed Load Times in Google – David Naylor’s (mini)case study on load times depending on server location. When every second counts, should people make the shift? [...]
Jason Butcher » Google Release Site Performance Tools via Webmaster Tools 1224 days ago
[...] latest release certainly confirms the general feeling from SEO’s that page load will become a ranking factor in 2010. Google certainly [...]
James 956 days ago
http://voucherbuddy.co.ukGoogle must be serious enough to include page load speeds as part of the page ranking criteria with the release of their new image compression format WEBP, but I can’t see it just being down to page speed loading only!