On the heels of a recent announcement from Google explaining their newest addition to the search algorithm, the search engine giant has now added a site speed feature to Webmaster Tools.
You can now access the new feature through the “Site performance” reports under the “Labs” section of the tool. It basically shows how fast your site loads in comparison to other sites and also includes a nice graph that shows your site’s speed over time.
It’s a small step in their larger effort to make the web faster for their users. Studies show that speeding up a site leads to higher user retention and activity, along with lowering costs and increasing revenue.
In addition to general site speed, Google also details specific pages and their load time. They give tips on how to improve speed on a per-page basis.
This new tool can be very helpful to ensuring your pages load as quickly as possible. While we don’t know how much significance will be placed on the new ranking factor, you can be sure that having fast loading web pages will be beneficial to your site. However, since they are adding this new feature to Webmaster Tools, it may be safe to assume that page speed will become an important ranking factor.
See a screen shot of one the site performance reports below.
