Page Speed To Become Mobile Ranking Factor

01-02-2018Tags: SEO, Websites, Optimisation

Google has announced that mobile page speed will become a mobile ranking factor from July 2018 onwards.

Whilst page speed has been used a ranking factor for desktop searches since April 2010, mobile page speed will now also impact search rankings for queries on a mobile device.

"Speed Update"

The “Speed Update”, which Google calls it, will only penalise pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only impact a small percentage of search queries. It is worth noting that mobile page speed will not be as strong a ranking factor as a search query intent as Google outlines “a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content”.

Chrome Developer Tools

Google recommends using the PageSpeed Insights tool to measure how well a page performs within the Chrome User Experience Report – a public database of key user experience metric for popular destinations on the web, as experienced by Chrome users under real-world conditions.

The only issue with the Chrome User Experience Report is that it doesn’t include data for smaller websites. In these circumstances, Google recommends using Lighthouse – an automated Chrome Developer Tool for auditing the quality (performance, accessibility and more) of web pages – to help evaluate a page’s performance.

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