Member Avatar for jgaonkar

Is web page loading speed really helps in google Ranking?. I did some experiments and found nothing sure that it helps in ranking.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by chrisjames

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Short answer: page speed matters, but not in isolation. Threads from , and raised the right tradeoffs — Google now uses Core Web Vitals as part of the Page Experience signals, and it also looks at real user behavior (bounces, engagement). That means speed can both be a direct tie-breaker for similarly relevant pages and an indirect amplifier via user metrics. Core Web Vitals / Page Experience docs (developers.google.com)

Measure first, using both lab and field tools: PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse for diagnostics, Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report and the Chrome UX Report (CrUX) for real-user data. Note that the responsiveness metric is now INP (replaced FID in 2024), so audits should report INP where available. Use the 75th-percentile (mobile and desktop) as the target. PageSpeed Insights / CrUX / INP announcement (developers.google.com)

Prioritize fixes by likely impact, not by a single score. Typical high-impact items:

  • LCP: optimize the hero image (responsive sizes, modern formats, preload or fetchpriority), avoid long request chains and big render-blocking CSS.
  • INP: reduce main-thread JS, defer noncritical scripts, code-split heavy bundles.
  • CLS: include explicit width/height or aspect-ratio, reserve ad/iframe space, use font-display:swap for fonts.
    Quick examples:
    <link rel="preload" href="/fonts/xxx.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2" crossorigin>
<img src="hero.webp" width="1200" height="600" fetchpriority="high" alt="">
<style>@font-face{font-display:swap;}</style>

    See the image and preload guidance for concrete tactics. (developer.mozilla.org)

Practical workflow: fix the highest-traffic templates first, validate with before/after CrUX/PSI and Search Console, and treat speed work as part of conversion and retention optimization (not a pure SEO silver bullet). Historical mentions of “speed” are useful context (as noted), but the current action items come from the Core Web Vitals / Page Experience guidance. (developers.google.com)

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Member Avatar for Dani

In my experience, there are two different things at play. The first is how much your ranking is directly affected by the pagespeed timings that Google collects, and, from what I can tell, unless your site is extraordinarily slow, it won't be very affected. However, Google also takes into consideration bounce rates and things like that, and I think your user experience is greatly affected by page speed.

For example, suppose someone clicks on your site from a Google search. Your site takes a bit too long to load for them, so they bounce back to the SERPS and check another site. Google really dislikes when your visitors do this because it shows Google that the visitor didn't get what they were looking for on your site and returned to the search results to look elsewhere. This affects your ranking for that keyword.

Member Avatar for laveen040

Yet Google did something completely different in 2010. Google has announced that the pace of the website will impact the search ranking. Now the pace of anyone accessing the content from a search result is a factor.

Unfortunately, speculation remained open to the exact definition of "site speed." The mystery further spread in June, when Matt Cutts of Google revealed that slow-run web pages would soon be penalized in the search rankings. Clearly Google is focusing more and more on the obvious: poor output of a website leads to poor user experience and websites with better user experiences need less advertising in the search results.

Member Avatar for chrisjames

The simple answer is that page speed does affect SEO. Page speed is a direct ranking factor, a fact known even better since Google's Algorithm Speed Update. However, speed can also affect rankings indirectly, by increasing the bounce rate and reducing dwell time.

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