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Site Speed Now Factors Google Ranking

You may recall back in November, we shared with you in a news brief that Google was talking about making page speed part of it’s ranking system.  Now that has become the reality.  Googled confirmed in a blog post late last week, that site speed with now factor in where you show up in Google’s ranking. 

“Speeding up websites is important – not just to site owners, but to all Internet users,” said Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal, both from Google.  “Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there.  But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs.”

Google has said for sometime that they want to change the internet is run, speed wise.  Maybe that’s something China would like?  Google launched a Site Performance tool last year to help webmasters watch their stats to help them maintain the best ranking as possible. 

Google said they actually implemented the new system a few weeks ago, and say that  less than 1% of actual search queries performed have been affected by the new calculations.  While speed will now factor in to your ranking, you will want to continue everything you are currently doing to keep up your rankings, including keeping up with keywords and phrases.