That comment though is not half true but a twisting of facts. I don't think that is acceptable to tell clients. I think telling them that speed of the site is important especially in usability and when you are doing PPC but not the way they are twisting it.

I dont believe this at all.

That just goes to prove the expression "that a little bit of knowledge is a bad thing!"

I'm not sure I would agree with the "half-true" conclusion but it does appear that a double standard is developing in response to the white paper.

If an SEO tells someone to improve their server performance to help with search optimization (advice which has been made on many occasions by many well-respected SEOs where it was appropriate), that's okay.

However, if a server provider publishes that argument as part of their marketing spiel, that's not okay.

I think the message will be tested and shaped by experience and response, but the rationalizations are not so far off the mark as it might seem. With a little tweaking, the white paper could become a good resource for everyone.

Barry, I think your interpretation makes good sense. Slow response times will mean that a search engine will have no choice but to crawl you more slowly, and deem your site to be less accessible and therefore less useful to users, so a ranking hit may eventually follow.

This is a no-brainer, because it is documented that Google looks at this. They have officially announced that page load times will be included in the calculation of landing page quality score. Reading between the lines it likely means if it is particularly slow, your score takes a hit.

No reason why similar principles shouldn't apply on the organic side.

I also agree with your conclusion that "super-fast" should confer little if any added benefit.

A slow site on a slow server (all else being equal) won't rank as well as a fast site on a on a fast server. It's a worse user experience. However, you can certainly argue that a fast site on a slow server can rank as well (all else being equal) as a slow site on a fast server. These guys are correct in suggesting that a fast server can be a useful SEO asset, but only in the context of a site that itself is properly optimised for speed. It certainly isn't critical, though, not the way it's reported they suggest it is.

BB

It is true that load time is factor in google's ranking algorithm, but it has been taken too literal and too far here. Once a site has a 'reasonable' load time it is unlikely to adversely affect rankings, most likely the only sites affected will be those that are deemed below an acceptable load time. Having a super-fast server certainly would not do any harm but it may just be an unneccessary expense