How important is site speed?

Feb 3, 2010

There has been a big buzz about site speed lately. It is now part of the ranking algorithm since the Caffeine update.

Why the buzz? Well Google has added a site speed section to their Webmaster Central and have developed a plug-in for Firefox. Google’s own browser, Chrome also contains tools to inspect page loading and speed. If big G thinks it’s important enough to build these tools, then us SEOs and webmasters need to take note.

Luckily, it’s not as important as it may at first appear, but it is a factor and should be taken into account.

For any webmasters or SEOs wanting to know the official line from Google, Matt Cutts answers in the official Google YouTube channel.