If you"re the proud owner of a website, the performance and load times of your website may soon affect the visibility of your content on Google Search. The company today announced it will start considering page speed as an additional factoring when determining the order in which mobile search results are shown.
Dubbed the "Speed Update", the new policy brings mobile searches on parity with their desktop counterparts, where the feature was already available. As a result of the change, slower websites may see links to their pages relegated to the bottom of the page starting in July of this year.
Cognizant of the concerns of users and publishers alike that were soon to follow, the post does reassure readers that the quality of the content will still be the major factor at play, remarking,
"The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content."
Alongside the reassurance, Google also encouraged content creators to make a greater effort in optimising the performance of their websites, referring to its Lighthouse, Chrome User Experience Report and PageSpeed Insights as useful tools in helping them do so.
Source: Google via Android Central