Google’s recent announcement that website speed would be one of the factors which would decide the ranking of a site in Google Search Results, created some turbulence on the web.

A lot of people hailed Google for including this rule, as this would motivate website owners to focus on their sites loading speed and thus improve the overall speed of the Internet.

However another group of people called this unfair since a lot of smaller sites don’t have the resources to buy expensive web hosting and try out new ways to speed up their sites, like the CDNs (Content Delivery Networks).

Matt Cutts Talks about Role of Page Speed in Search Rankings:

In this video, Matt Cutts of Google, tries to explain just how important this factor is and whether website and blog owners be obsessing about improving the speed of their website.

Things we get from this video:

  1. Page load speed is a minor factor in Search Engine Ranking (at present).
  2. Its one of the 200 signals Google uses to determine the rank of a website in Search Results.
  3. A website with better content would show up above a website that has better speed.
  4. Website owners should utilize tools like Page Speed and Firebug to help them improve loading times.