
Using page speed in mobile search ranking - igrigorik
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/01/using-page-speed-in-mobile-search.html
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reaperducer
I expect this should hit bad WordPress developers hardest, since the throw-
another-plugin-on-the-fire philosophy has led to pages that load 15 javascript
libraries for features not even present on that page.

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user5994461
Wordpress is well optimized from my experience.

It loads the page and the text first so you can start reading. The images and
scripts are delayed and cached. Comments are last. Pictures and thumbnails
have various resolutions to improve load time.

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plorkyeran
Wordpress itself is good at getting the important content to you ASAP. Many
Wordpress plugins are not as good.

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mobilio
But what about themes?

Most i've seen load 5+ CSS files and least 10+ JS.

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edent
Looks like another victory for [http://ampletter.org/](http://ampletter.org/)

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cramforce
You vastly overestimate our agility, but we will take the compliment :)

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wffurr
Shouldn't Google have done this in the first place instead of AMP?

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Klathmon
They did, back in 2010 [0]. And suprisingly nobody really changed anything,
which is why they eventually came up with the idea for and created AMP.

This change is more focused on mobile.

[0] [https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-
speed-i...](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-
search-ranking.html)

~~~
SahAssar
It would have made a change if it was more properly communicated and had a
stricter penalty. Really, if those sites where warned for having a few MB's of
tracking js or unnecessary assets by google and facebook they would have
changed. The problem is that the warning was just sent out as blogposts, not
as a drop in SERPs.

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dfabulich
> _Although speed has been used in ranking for some time, that signal was
> focused on desktop searches. Today we’re announcing that starting in July
> 2018, page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches._

> _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._

The desktop ranking signal had almost no effect; slow pages reliably turned up
in search results. Maybe some pages that took 15s to paint were slightly
diminished in results, if that.

If the mobile ranking signal is as weak as the desktop ranking signal, (and
they seem to be indicating it's going to be a very small effect,) I would
expect this change to have no measurable effect at all on the median
performance of pages loaded from Google search results.

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trimtab
Without NN won't ranking pages by "page speed" simply enhance the benefits of
purchasing "fast lanes" near end points (on previously dumb pipes ;-) to those
willing to do so?

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jwilk
What's NN?

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grzm
Net Neutrality. (Or Netscape Navigator, but I think in this case it's the
former.)

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reaperducer
Yeah, I thought Navigator, too.

Now get off my lawn while I load winsock.

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superasn
While this is great news but is there a way to opt-out of it? I don't really
mind heavy sites (sometimes) since I'm always on wifi most of the time and
care more about search relevance than speed.

Kind of like how amazon shows you the search results by "Relevance", "Price",
"Popularity", etc. Maybe google can do it too and let us sort by "Relevance",
"Speed", "By Geography", etc.

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clarkenheim
You've never been able to opt out of any of the google search algorithm
features. I don't see why you we be able to opt out of this one.

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nerdponx
The fact that I get different results based on what device I'm using really
bothers me. Why does Google have to try to be so omniscient? Why not just ask
me, "Prioritize fast-loading pages? (y/n)".

Concerns over Google-the-company aside, Google-the-search-platfrom really
sucks IMO because it _assumes_ it knows what I want, rather than just asking
me. That mentality was Steve Jobs' worst legacy and I hate how it's wound up
everywhere.

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Klathmon
I feel like it's easy to frame the question that way, but really look at how
many questions they would need to ask...

* Prioritize fast-loading pages?

* Prioritize mobile pages?

* Prioritize by pagesize?

* Prioritize your language? Prioritize local results first? Prioritize news sites? Prioritize blogging sites? Prioritize comment platforms? Prioritize "safe-for-work" websites? etc...

There's an almost unlimited number of questions that you could be asked, and
the reality is that nobody wants to answer any of them.

At some point, they need to make some decisions for you, otherwise you are
tasked with coming up with your own search algorithm yourself! The question
becomes which decisions should they make for you, and which should they let
you make.

Currently the answer looks like they are making most of them for you, while
allowing you to make decisions on whether you want "web, videos, images,
books, news, etc.." and what date range you are searching for.

I think that's a good choice for them, because at the end of the day if you
want more control or choice in your searches, you can always use another
search engine.

This isn't also unique to Google or their products. I've struggled with this
in my own programs and products, even open source ones. An endless list of
configuration options means that nobody will ever set them all correctly, and
it increases the amount of testing you need to do almost exponentially.
Choosing good defaults, or in many cases making the decision outright for your
users is the best possible case, because there just isn't any other way which
scales out to the entire piece of software in most cases.

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jjuhl
Agreed. Knobs to turn is a good thing. But only if they are super relevant
knobs. Too much configurability leads to bloat. Good defaults are good, but
even better is (often) not having a knob to turn at all.

