How does website speed actually impact search ranking?

Could any one tell me that the website speed impacted search ranking? is it true? As sites with more images do load more slowly but they are getting good rankings. why?

Your comments would be appreciated!

Unless a site loads painfully slow, to the point of almost being unresponsive, the site speed is really not going to impact rankings. Google just put that site speed BS out there to get people to improve their site speed with the goal of increasing AdSesnse and AdWords revenue.

So what was the reason for using https/SSL? Or was that just a rumor?

yunarel said:

Could any one tell me that the website speed impacted search ranking? is it true? As sites with more images do load more slowly but they are getting good rankings. why?

Your comments would be appreciated!

Click to expand...

I dont think that it influence your ranking too much unless you have a site which loads too slow.

Hey yunarel,

Yes the website speed plays an important role in improving the ranking as the website with good speed provides the good user experience which enhances the ranking of the website.

As far as the website with slow speed but good ranking is concerned, the reason for this can be that the competition to those sites is low or Google algorithms have not caught them yet.

Its good to see that you find my post informative. Thank you too. yunarel

As we all know that Search Engine are trying to provide user friendly search Results and if the website loading is too slow, then user also disappointed and he or she left that website without visit due to this Bounce rate also increases.
For these reason website speed is also an important Ranking Factor

When you look at page load as a variable unto itself... Its real easy to reduce it down to about meaningless with the exception of exceptionally long load times. We can reduce the overall effect and poor user performance to a UX related issue... it takes to long to load people leave the page. wait... people leave the page? Couldn't we then say that page load is directly related to bounce rate? as seen in this thread: http://www.webmastersun.com/threads/11931-Why-bounce-rate-of-a-site-so-important-in-SEO

the same parallel discussion as the one above is being played out. Google doesn't know, they cant tell this, they cant do this... I think this type of thinking is a bit short sided. Google spider goes to your site and says "hey this site is slow" Google then compares its KNOWN data ( GA and SERP data to name but 2 known avenues of data ) and says the slow load is effecting overall UX and the site shouldn't be ranked as well.

Page load and Bounce Rate go hand in hand. YES, there are exceptions to this concept. As brought up in this discussion, IGN blows monkeys.. but really look at how IGN loads - then REALLY look at how IGN loads. It stacks its loading, this is not done randomly by the nature of some pre determined load sequence.. there is intention in the way that site works.

What's the first thing that loads? the page title correct? then the rest of the content you wanted to see.. its right there.. then the damn opaque full screen popup, then all the ads.. and the carrot is right there in front of your face.. you are going to read the damn article if it kills you. They are in effect increasing onpage times, decreasing bounce rate ( scarry but true ) and diminishing the ill effect of poor load time. Basically using a multitude of known SEO variables, to diminish the effect of another.

With 200+ SEO variables at play.. looking at the effect of any one, is fruitless.. how that ONE plays with others, and how it can diminish or be diminshed by the effect of others is whatreally needs to be look at and understood.

As the speed of the site affect the ranking?

Firstly, if you expected that the speed of loading web site greatly affect the ranking of your site, it should be clarified that it is not. You will not find a direct correlation, ie, sites with low ratings can be loaded quickly, and vice versa.

The results depend on the index, which is used for measuring the speed of loading web site. For example, if we take into account the time required to download the first byte of the webpage, then it turns out that this factor has influenced the sick, because the sites where the first byte is loaded very quickly, tend to have a higher ranking in search engines.

If you take other factors into account - such as the time required to load the main content or the time it takes to load the whole page (images and advertising), then things are not so simple, because it seems that these two factors do not have a special importance for Yandex and Google.

In general, it is believed that the rate of loading a web site is less than 1% impact on the rating. Google employees themselves have said that they take account speed indicators site, but about which terms in question they did not say.

However, many sites are reporting an increase in traffic from the search engines after they have optimized their sites for faster download speeds. Download speed is a very important parameter for users, so that if your website is running slow, you should think about its optimization. After all, if the site is too long to load, users will leave him even before the site is fully loaded.

What you need to do to improve the speed of loading web site
If you want to increase the speed of loading web site, there are several ways. Firstly, it is necessary to measure the speed of loading your site - or how did you know that it loads too slow?

Does the website speed impact search ranking or just increase a bounce rate? As if site is going to take too much time to load, then it may happen that use close that site.

The page load speed is a known factor for search engine rankings for sure, but no-one knows how much it affects the rankings. I would assume that it can only hurt you if the page-load is really bad...

Website page speed still plays a important role in order to use user engagement. However this does not have any impact on your rankings. You may optimize your site for better performance.

Site speed is probably less than 3% of total factors.

Fast sites make users happy and improve the overall quality of the web especially for those users with slow Internet connections. It is all about how your site is helpful to users and Google will appreciate your site and keyword rankings.

yunarel said:

Could any one tell me that the website speed impacted search ranking? is it true? As sites with more images do load more slowly but they are getting good rankings. why?

Your comments would be appreciated!

Click to expand...

You are thinking this from a wrong angle. I have said it a million times: Build your website thinking about your visitors, not thinking about search engines.
The loading speed of your website is directly affecting user experience. If a website is slow to load then I might come back a second time, but I guarantee you that I won`t be coming a third time.
Your website is your business and you should aim to better each aspect of it. (I`m not saying to go crazy and cry because you have a 1.5s loading time and you want a 1.4s one but long loading times is a big no-no).

As for the aspect if it is or not a ranking signal: Nobody here can tell you for sure. There are speculations, but speculations are not facts and we can debate speculations a whole year if you want.

A Website speed should be 3.5 seconds to load .If your website loads slower users will leave your website which means no conversion->which means no sale ->and on top of that you will face high bounce rate which means users left your website without finding any relevant things in your website or they didn't find what they were looking for.
More importantly, Bounce Rate is designed to tell you if you have the right audience coming to your pages and if you are meeting their expectations.High bounce rate affects search ranking.If your website takes forever to load users wont think of visiting it the second time.In this way you will loose a lot of potential customers.Sit speed is highly important if you are a product selling website or company

It impacts it due to Bounce Rate being a factor. If someone waits ages to enter your site, only to leave at the "first bite" then Google would take that as a bounce, which reduces your rankings.

Nimit Suri said:

A Website speed should be 3.5 seconds to load .If your website loads slower users will leave your website which means no conversion->which means no sale ->and on top of that you will face high bounce rate which means users left your website without finding any relevant things in your website or they didn't find what they were looking for.
More importantly, Bounce Rate is designed to tell you if you have the right audience coming to your pages and if you are meeting their expectations.High bounce rate affects search ranking.If your website takes forever to load users wont think of visiting it the second time.In this way you will loose a lot of potential customers.Sit speed is highly important if you are a product selling website or company

Click to expand...

bigupman said:

It impacts it due to Bounce Rate being a factor. If someone waits ages to enter your site, only to leave at the "first bite" then Google would take that as a bounce, which reduces your rankings.

Click to expand...

Bounce rate is NOT a ranking factor. You are both horribly misinformed. Google does not even have bounce rate data on most of the webpages out there. Most websites are not using Google Analytics. If Google cannot access the data, they cannot use it as a ranking factor.

On top of that, a "bounce" is not necessarily a bad thing. Just because a visitor doesn't visit other pages on my site does not mean they did not find what they were looking for or find the page useful.

I see...thanks for clarifying that. And about the "normal" bounce rate you are right. Even if all the websites had GA, the bounce rate would still be irrelevant. (take the example of landing pages)