If you’re hoping to get your mobile website in front of more eyeballs in Google Search, you’d better start with increasing your website’s speed, and you should do it before July 2018. A recent announcement by the search giant revealed the lengths it’s going to integrate site speed into its latest search algorithm change coming this summer.
According to Google:
The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.
Google goes on to recommend that developers employ measures that address “how performance affects a user’s experience of their page” while looking at a number of “user experience metrics.” The company also links to a number of tools to help developers get their websites up to par.
Google continually tweaks its search algorithm to target various parts of web development, design, and quality. Updates such as Google’s Panda update haven’t always been welcome by many web developers but have arguably done more good than harm overall.