Page speed. This may be something that you have thought about, but usually from a usability or user experience point of view. But now Google has released a new tool that measures page speed and gives the website a score out of 100. The page speed tool can also analyse mobile websites which is a great addition to the usual page speed tool

This is an interesting idea from Google Labs, now I know by now the question you are all asking is “yes but how does this affect me?”. This is a great point and one we are yet to know the answer to, will the faster pages be given priority for rankings? Frankly like most things Google this is an enigma to us at the moment and only time will tell.

The tool is extremely easy to use just put in the page URL and it will tell you how fast the page is and then areas to optimise in order to make it quicker, this is set out in a nice traffic light system with High priority as red, Medium priority as yellow and Low priority are green. It also gives you a nice pat on the back for any rules that you are adhering to, they come up in grey.

Page speed analysis of BBC News

Why would Google do this if it wasn’t going to affect rankings?

Well the long and the short of it is that the quicker your internet experience the more pages you can view in a specific time and the more adverts you can click. This is all money in the pocket for the guys at Google.

Is this something that you would take into consideration now or will you wait and see what happens with the rankings before you try it?