It's now official. Sites with poor loading speeds will be penalized in Google's search results. And not just on desktop. Expected since January 2018, this announcement is logically in line with the spirit of the Index Mobile First , Google's new indexing method which, to rank its results, gives priority to the mobile version of a site and no longer to that of the desktop version.
"The Studies show that the loading speed of a page is really important for mobile users," explains the Mountain View firm. Therefore, to support this change, Google encourages site owners to optimize their platforms with this new SEO ranking criterion.
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What impact in terms of SEO?
In concrete terms, the implementation of the Google Speed Update will not actually change much for the moment, as we explain very well Olivier Andrieu on Abondance.com. In fact, only really slow sites will be impacted, explains the SEO specialist. In addition, sites that are perfectly optimized in terms of page loading speed should not be at an advantage either.
All of this is also confirmed on the John Mueller's Twitter account , Google SEO spokesperson: "To clarify on the mobile speed update: a) this only affects the slowest sites, b) those can incrementally improve (though ideally you'd significantly improve the speed...), c) we're still aiming for this month. If your site is reasonably fast, tweaking won't change things". In other words, even if your page is not in MPA , stay focused on the quality of your content, which is the main criterion taken into account for indexing sites on mobile.
In short, Google Speed Update will only affect a small percentage of requests. At least at the beginning. Because with Google, you never really know what to expect as opacity reigns over the changes to its algorithm. At Studio Cassette en tous, we keep an eye out.
