Google Announces Site Speed Signal - What is the Impact?

Since January we have heard tons of business going to be effected with the new Algorithm Signal being part of the ranking algorithm ..

What is changing with Google and Ranking a Website?

You can find a ton of articles written about this new ranking algorithm, by going to Google and searching for words like "Google Site Speed Algorithm" the big deal seems to be to really enhance user experience.

What does this mean for business owners?

Just as a company must create a buying experience in their storefront, you must create that same experience online. If your web page takes more than a few seconds to load you obviously may loose visitors back to the search engine. Take for example we know that if we go to a search engine and type in a query and click on a link... and we go to a site looking for the information we requested. "SPEED MATTERS" as well Call to a Action Matters.

Looking at your website can tell you a few things however Google has given us a few tools that allow us know our exact issues with a website before the visitor does.

If you jump out to Google Webmaster Tools you can receive free advise directly from Google and see what a web spider sees also known as Google Bot. This information is something you can use for improving your site as well you will see areas that Google maybe having issues with your data. Not only can you use Google Webmaster Tools but Google Analytics together these tools can show you strong opportunity for growth in your company. Ok well know we have a few tools for tracking how our visitors are using our site and how Google Bot see's our website but how fast is my site loading is the next question you need to ask. Google has answered this by offering us a few nice firefox extensions and has created a complete section on their website explaining the benefits of optimizing your load time as well tips on how to tune your site.

Google SPEED: http://code.google.com/speed/ as they put it "Let's make the Web Faster"

it just makes sense, however it does take time to optimize your site for the new future of search.

Google and Microsoft Speak together about Experiments done!

Listen to Eric Schurman and Jake Brutlag as they speak about tests done with User Experience and Site Performance. As they have been working on a very intense experiment on this algorithm as they took random sites and watched, Bounce Rates, User Experience, Length it took for page to display as well many other test ran. If you own a business you should really make sure your marketing department is already looking into this.

“Performance Related Changes and their User Impact”.
O'REILLY Velocity Conference Google + Bing (A must watch video)