SEO drama over site speed and Google algo
 

Anyone with a half-decent twitter follow list of SEO pundits/bloggers/practitioners would be aware of the recent drama/hubbub over site speed. In a nutshell, many people are claiming that just because Matt Cutts issued this tweet http://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/6283319690 that Google is now going to add SITE SPEED (load speed) into its ranking factor pool.

I'm not so sure. Even if this was true, the SERP algo has so many other factors that adding this new factor in would have little effect. Of course, the more competitive your niche, the higher the impact of your compliance with even the smallest factor, right?

whats not right about it is that it has the potential to favor corporate and commercial sites that can afford the best infrastructure and technology. the guy in his mothers basement that happens to produce the best website about gaming will get punished.

so depending on how much google weights this, it is a form of economical censorship..

studying some caffeine results most of the sites ahead of me had slower load times.

most likely one small factor among hundreds and very far from the most important.

the end result will be hundreds of seo experts concerned with having a lightning fast site and ignoring boring and hard basics like getting plenty of quality inbound links. which is fine by me.

i guess all things being equal site speed may give you an advantage. but all things will never be equal. i prefer results to thought experiments.

Good point. The problem with a paradigm of MONEY = TRUST is the issue of commercial bias which undermines TRUST. Kind of a catch 22.

It's a small factor yes, but another reason to get your sites coded properly :)

Average Load Time: Fast (1.762 Seconds)

I love a bit of that...

what they are doing makes sense, if 2 sites have equal quality content, backlinks, etc then it makes complete sense then the one that will load faster should be higher...

my sites are super speedy so I don't have to worry :glugglug

Multiply it by infinity, and take it to the depth of forever, and I will still have barely a glimpse of what you are talking about.

Google is preparing for Chrome OS, they want to see how far they can push the internet webmaster community to optimize. This will be exploited, there are already was to exploit caffeine on some of the black seo boards. You guys better pay big time attention to this new engine because its a killer.

This hopefully discourages people who buy all these cheap virtual hosting accounts to whore out their links etc. All in all it is intended for those who play by the game correctly and don't try to cheat or enhance their own sites on their own but let nature take its course they are rewarded.

Let "nature" takes its course? Dont you mean "follow Googles RULES exactly" or be penalized for it? Isnt adwords the same thing as whoring out links?

This company has crossed the antitrust threshold and they hide behind their massive PR campaign making users think they are "not evil". In our business, dont think Google is your friend because they would be happy if 95% of you didnt exist. Sorry it just turns my stomach the double standard this company has displayed of late.

Think about it...

Code Name: Caffeine

What do you think about when you think of 'Caffeine'?

They picked that name for a reason.

That could also be the reasoning for the Chrome browser. Not only to get their hands in that market, but they also now have the debatably fastest browser to benchmark with. Well... it's not like they couldn't just use Opera or a Vanilla FF. I don't know, just kinda seems like they got a syngery going with it.

I took that more as.

Crap hosting companies and crap hosts doing spam which are often redirect or masked url trash host type stuff....

..are now on check. In general though, the faster your host the more sales you're able to produce.

Twitter is over capacity.
Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.

im getting those messages 9 out of 10 times i try to open a twitter link lately..

Just wait until mom and pop websites are getting DDOS'd to bump them off the top rankings.
WG

Good point. Matt Cutts talks about "game proofing" the system but you just identified a key weak spot in this alleged algo feature addition.

Regardless, this is yet another MARKETING BONANZA for dedicated hosting companies' UPTIME guarantees and, as mentioned earlier, a jab at shady index pimps using cheaper virtual hosting accounts.

Yep its a win for big business on the internet and a big "fuck you" to any small time mom and pop hosting companies. I wonder if all those hippies at Google realize they are Republicans. :1orglaugh

A lot of that maybe due to the fact that Google is listing tons of Twitter results and people are intentionally/unintentionally getting traffic to their twitter lists. Add that to their normal load = more FAIL WHALE appearances than normal.

Pretty funny. Pretty sure it has always been a factor. They are just announcing it now [for some reason].

Wow - SEO is so complicated. Google - why can't we just be friends. Google is like the genius psych lord that by brain is too weak to understand. Google - I love you!!!

I love google.

Have yet to experience this 'Caffeine' though.

SEO pundits/bloggers/practitioners bah.

Googlebot was hitting my site pretty hard (100k+ requests/day) so I was proxying the requests for anything coming from 66.249.x.x to another server with an identical database... this would have added at least a second to load time, possibly more. I've had to stop doing that now, just in case load speed IS a ranking factor.

Not like they deliver the relevant searches that they talk about.

Not happening, atleast not that way.
What's more likely to affect your ranking is the bounce rate, where speed is a huge factor.