Site Speed
Site speed relates to how fast a site is able to load the content and resources contained on it. Speed affects a user’s experience of the website while also impacting how efficiently search engines are able to identify, crawl, and index content. Our Hangout Notes will help you understand the importance of having a fast site, along with advice to improve site speed. To learn more about the most important considerations around this topic, make sure you read our Ultimate Guide to Site Speed & Performance.
Download Time in GSC is HTML Download Time, Doesn’t Include Rendering Time
The download time shown in GSC is the time taken to download the HTML page, not the rendered version that users see. If this time is =>2s this is probably too slow because more time will be needed for the page to be rendered by the browser.
Google Splits Sites With Ok And Very Slow Load Times
Google usually differentiates between sites that are reasonably ok with loading and those that are very slow when it comes to site speed.
Google Limits Crawl Frequency of Slow Loading Pages
This is done because Google doesn’t want to spend a long time accessing slow to load pages and so as not to put more of a load on an already struggling server.
Caching Does Not Help with Rankings
CDN caching systems are not a direct ranking factor but it can improve ranking indirectly by improving user engagement. The Page Speed Insights tool may not report the impact of a CDN.
Balance Content and Functionality With Site Speed
It’s a mistake to remove content and functionality to improve page speed. They both need to be balanced to provide the overall best experience.
Rankings are Not Affected by Page Load Times Within the Normal Range
Pages which take minutes to load might not be shown in search, but otherwise there is no page speed penalty that would affect pages with a normal load time. Google is recommending a mobile page load time within 1 second but say 2-3 seconds is well above average.
Page Load Penalty Only Affects Extremely Slow Pages
Google only penalises pages which are extremely slow, taking minutes to load. Pages up to 30 seconds won’t be affected.
Mobile Page Speed Will Eventually Affect Mobile-First Rankings
Mobile page speed will be incorporated into mobile-first rankings ‘at some point’.
Increase Crawl Budget by Increasing Server Capacity
You can help to increase your crawl budget by making sure it doesn’t return server errors when Google crawls.
Page Speed Does Not Affect Mobile Rankings
Google doesn’t currently use page speed to affect mobile rankings but they are considering it.