Is Website Loading Speed A Rating Factor?

I am sure many of you may have already heard that Google’s ranking algorithm takes into consideration the speed at which a site loads or responds to a web request.

Well it is indeed true. Why should loading speed of a website matter? Well according to research and studies performed, visitors to a site tend to hang around longer if web requests get executed faster.

Internet is based on speed, the faster the information is available the better. Since Google itself is obsessed with speed; the faster it can find you the information the happier you are and the happier they are. It all boils down to money. They keep their search users happy, they make more money. So to keep their search clients happy they place the pressure on the website owners and webmasters to not only provide quality sites and content but do so in a speed that meets with their standards.

Since Google is the top most search engine (almost 70% or more of the search requests is through them) and they have the monopoly they dictate the terms. I know, it sucks and at times it is not fair. But if you want to pop up higher on the SERP of Google then you better ensure your site loading speed meets to their standards.

Is there tools to help with testing your site’s loading speed? Yes here are some of them;

Page Speed – This is a Firefox/Firebug Tool that help evaluate the performance of your web pages and suggests ways to improve them.

YSlow – Is a tool from Yahoo that helps with Website speed.

Webmaster Tools – In the Labs> Site Performance will show you a chart of your web site loading speed experienced by users across the world.

So there you have it, use these tools to improve the speed of your sites, or at least to figure out it’s performance. If below par, then find ways to improve it.