• About Us
  • Contributors
  • Guides
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Write for The SEM Post
  • Submit a tip or contact us!
  • Newsletters

The SEM Post

Latest News About SEO, SEM, PPC & Search Engines

  • Google
  • SEO
  • Mobile
  • Local
  • Bing
  • Pay Per Click
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • State of the Industry
You are here: Home / Google / How Page Speed as a Google Ranking Factor Works

How Page Speed as a Google Ranking Factor Works

April 8, 2016 at 4:40 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS

pagespeed rankingThere is always this push by SEOs to get the highest possible page speed score to get the most benefit from the ranking boost related to speed.  But webmasters might be looking at it the wrong way in how Google applies it – or not.

The question was how big of a ranking factor page speed is, and part of John Mueller’s answer was that it seems to have a bigger impact on sites that aren’t fast, rather than sites getting teeny tiny boosts for every milisecond of speed a site owner can manage to increase a site by.

Here is what he said:

So I guess there are two aspects here when you look at server speed.  On the one hand there’s the kind of perceived speed in the browser, in the time it takes to render a page, and that is something that is definitely a ranking factor, it’s probably not the biggest ranking factor. And usually we try to differentiate between sites that are really slow, and sites that are kind of normal.  So just optimizing on a millisecond basis is not going to affect anything in the search results.

But obviously, the faster you make the site, the more people are going to stay on your site, the more they are going to do on your site, the more they tend to recommend it to other people, so indirectly it is a factor.

The other part of server speed is more in regards to crawling, so how quickly we can crawl pages from your website, and that’s not directly a ranking factor, but it does affect how quickly we can pick up new and changed content on your site.

So for example, if you are a news site and we can’t crawl the website quick enough, we might miss out on some of the news articles you put out, that could be something where you’d lose visibility compared to competitors who we can crawl a little bit faster. So that’s kind of something to keep in mind there.

On the other hand, if this is a static site that is going to remain the same for maybe a couple of years, it’s more informational site where the content will remain the same, but even if we can’t crawl it that quickly, that’s not going to affect anything in search because we aren’t going to miss any of the things you put out there.

So it seems like there might be a point where “optimizing on a millisecond basis is not going to affect anything in the search results,” despite many webmasters pushing for every extra point in the page speed tool.

But as Mueller points out, those millisecond increases can benefit in other ways, just not necessarily in ranking per se.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS
The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020

Filed Under: Google, SEO

Sign up for our newsletter


Trackbacks

  1. SearchCap: AdWords visuals, search pics & more says:
    April 8, 2016 at 2:25 pm

    […] How Page Speed as a Google Ranking Factor Works, thesempost.com […]

Founder & Editor

Jennifer Slegg (2052)

Sign up for our daily news recap & weekly newsletter.


Follow us online

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Linkedin
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Latest News

2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates

We finally have the first Google Quality Rater Guidelines update of 2022, and like usual, it is … [Read More...]

Recent Posts

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters
  • Analyzing “How Google Search Works” Changes from Google
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines Update: New Introduction, Rater Bias & Political Affiliations
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines: Reputation for News Sites; Video Content Updates; Quality for Information Sites
  • Google Makes Major Changes to NoFollow, Adds Sponsored & UGC Tags
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines Targeting E-A-T, Page Quality & Interstitials

Categories

  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Amazon
  • Apple
  • Bing
  • Branding
  • Browsers
  • Chrome
  • Content Marketing
  • Design
  • Domains
  • DuckDuckGo
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Firefox
  • Foursquare
  • Google
    • Analytics
    • Google RankBrain
    • Quality Rater's Guidelines
  • History of Search
  • Industry Spotlight
  • Instagram
  • Internet Explorer
  • Links
  • Local
  • Mobile
  • Native Advertising
  • Other Search Engines
  • Pay Per Click
  • Pinterest
  • Publishers
  • Security
  • SEO
  • Snapchat
  • Social Media
  • State of the Industry
  • The SEM Post
  • Tools
  • Twitter
  • Uncategorized
  • User Experience
  • Video Marketing
  • Week in Review
  • Whitepapers
  • Wordpress
  • Yahoo
  • Yelp
  • YouTube
March 2023
MTWTFSS
« Aug  
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031 

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 · News Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in