Search Marketing News

Page speed 'will be key to Google ranking in 2010'

November 17th 2009

Page speed is going to be the buzzword for search engine optimisation (SEO) in 2010, Google has indicated.

In an interview with WebProNews, Google's Matt Cutts said that page speed may soon be taken into consideration as a ranking factor.

"Historically, we haven't had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast," he said.

Mr Cutts said he believed a lot of people in 2010 were going to be thinking more about how to speed up sites and how to make them rich without writing a lot of custom javascript.

Speed has been a consistent theme for Google over the course of 2009.

The search engine giant recently launched a Firefox extension called Page Speed, which provides webmasters with resources specifically aimed at speeding up their pages.

Mr Cutts said that using the internet should be "a good experience" and that faster sites which made web-browsing easier and more enjoyable should be awarded more of a bonus.

"If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don't want that as much," he added.

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