On February 5, 2019, Google held a regular hangout meeting for webmasters. At this event, John Mueller claimed that a page’s load speed was a minor ranking factor.
One of the webmasters asked: “We’re working on improving our page load speed. How long will it take Google to recognize the changes?”
Mueller said there wasn’t any specific time frame: it might take a day or several months as well. At the same time, major updates will improve the rankings gradually.
According to Mueller’s words, Google robots pay more attention to the relevance of your content rather than the load speed. So it’s pretty hard to evaluate the impact of works that are aimed only at the load speed improvements. A noticeable change in the site’s rankings can happen only if it’s fully optimized.
SEO–expert commentary:
«Besides the load speed, there are numerous factors that actually have a bigger impact on the site’s rankings. For example, backlinks and behavioral factors are more important for Google because they point directly to the site’s credibility in the organic search. When optimizing your website, you need to remember about the balance between technical, external, and usability improvements».
Technologist SEO-expert of the SEO.RU Company
Konstantin Abdullin
