Just when you thought all that Google cared about was fresh, relevant content, they go and throw another wrench into the works.  A few days ago Google announced that their page-ranking algorithms are now going to take page loading speed into account.  This means all those sites that have really cool revolving banner images have just been knocked down a notch in the page-ranking wars.  It also means that if you site is slow for *any* reason, it suddenly becomes a disadvantage to your search term rankings.

Google is all about delivering relevant results and a good user experience during the search process.  Apparently the Meisters in charge of tweaking their sacred ranking algorithms feel that a slow site inherently detracts from the user experience.  Even in our current world of ubiquitous broadband Internet connections, this is still an issue.  Now it used to be that all you had to do was optimize your images to improve page loading speed, not any more…

Google Page Speed

Google provides a free tool call Page Speed that Web developers can use to test your site’s loading speed and then optimize it for the best possible performance.  The issues it addresses are quite technical and go way beyond the scope of this kind of post.  So what do you do if you don’t happen to have a second career as a geek?  Contact your current Web developer and tell them you have, in the immortal words of Tom Cruise in Top Gun, “a need for speed!” and let them figure it out.