Well as you probably know Google now looks at your website's speed as a factor in it's ranking algorithm. From the horses mouth: "You may have heard that here at Google we're obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed." So how fast is your website? - Check it here: http://www.webpagetest.org/ (I'd appreciate it if you used this tool so our method of testing is consistent and we can then compare results. - Post your answer in the poll (the one you want is 'load time' of 'first view').
Matt Cutts says a lot of things, but they do not always hold up when tested. He said page rank sculpting no longer works a while ago, but then a few people tested it and found out it still does, just not as much. We're finding some contrary data to what Matt Cutts said, seems to be a relatively powerful factor as individual factors go - but obviously depends how slow your site was to begin with. There's a big impact on users and Google measures user behavior too as part of its rankings algorithm so there's a double whammy too. There's a triple whammy in that faster websites are also more likely to get linked too. When in doubt look what the industry leaders do, and the majority of them obsess over speed.
You're right about some Matt's quotes. But I meant if your page loads for 2.1s or 2.9s it's really minor difference. Of course difference between 10s and 1s makes a difference. That should be concern even before Google started talking about speed because it matters to visitors, too.
I don't have my own website to test, but.... I believe that good speed helps the viewer, especially if it's their first impression. Wouldn't it bother everybody if your site loaded in 15+ seconds? Anyways, very interesting!
Site speed will never be important factor. It is pretty obvious site with more functionality loading slower, than site with plain html. How long it takes to Google Analytics to load?
Thank You for sharing this information but if your website is popular then speed factor does not matter.
in Google webmater tools it says at the moment: On average, pages in your site take 1.4 seconds to load (updated on Aug 7, 2010). This is faster than 82% of sites BTW. Google Webmaster tools measures not only the home page and makes an average. The tool specified here is only measuring the home page speed. I believe what Google measures is better.
Matt Cutts says one thing and then another. Not everything that comes from him should really be followed. He's good at giving hints and advices but it's really up to you to find out for yerself. As for the page speed, yes it is one of the many ranking factors Google takes into consideration and no matter how small or big it might be - it's always best to consider all POSSIBLE factors for your website. Another way of finding out how fast or slow your site loads is through Page Speed code from Google codes which can be added if you have a FireBug on your browser. 1. Install your browser with Firebug (preferably your FF) http://getfirebug.com/ 2. Once installed, get the page speed code here http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/download.html and install it while using FireFox. Not only that it shows how fast or slow your website is, it also displays other stuffs such as what are things that you can do to have your site speed faster, more like it gives reports to yer. Site or Page speed can really help, not only in SEO or rankings but for User Experience as well. People tend to like websites that easily loads up to display the content while they don't bother much for websites that loads for like 5 to 6 seconds (NOT unless its a PORN vid) XD Hope that helped.
BS, utter and total BS. Slow site = conversion killer -- I voted sub one second. To show that I myself am not talking BS here's the link to my report which scores AAAAAF, the final F could be replaced with an A and will be the next time I log in to sort things, I just need to move a few files to the CDN and update the references to them onsite. http://www.webpagetest.org/result/100824_3FY9/ If you have a slow site it sucks for your users, if you don't look after users they abandon and go to your competitors. I'm not bothered about page speed being a ranking factor, I'm only bothered about it being a conversion factor but then too many people think serps are all that counts which is utter BS too as at the end of the day there's only one figure to really care about and that's turnover.
So true. Not giving any importance to site speed IS the BEST way to kill your website's conversion! You might as well go fishing! lol