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Like all you know, page speed with be a ranking factor in Google in 2010 and if you didn't believe it until now, maybe Google adding a page speed report to Google Webmaster Tools will convince you of that.
I figured I show you detailed screen shots of how slow this site is, using this tool.
As you can see from the chart below, this site is slower than 86% of the other sites on the Internet. The chart does slow slight improvement, but clearly, I need to clean things up here - quick.
Then Google shows me example load times for specific pages on my site:
Then Google offers speed suggestions:
I can drill down deeper on a specific page to see exactly what is suggested:
Figured I slam my own site over someone elses - why not.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Rob Abdul
12/03/2009 08:18 pm
I think your load time is down to your sites popularity.
Mike Gracen
12/03/2009 08:43 pm
Excellent post. I hadn't seen the page load tool in GWT yet. I will definitely take a look asap. Cheers!
James
12/04/2009 01:40 am
No, the site load time is taken overall. You should use YSlow and Google Page Speed to see where you can improve.
sockyee
12/05/2009 01:08 pm
They should look into using this criteria as a main factor in search engine ranking. I mean it's logical that a highly optimized site that provides good information should also be fast loading or else it will not live up to its expectation for being a top ranked site.
No Name
12/05/2009 03:15 pm
I haven't heard this info before and haven't noticed the speed report in Google's webmaster tools. Thanks for the tip, I'm off to check it out right now.
Ken in Maine
12/05/2009 10:45 pm
Now here's an irony. One of the suggestions was to gzip some files. The files Google was suggesting to gzip are hosted by, you guessed it. Google it is two of their scripts, one for Google Analysts and the other for one of their Friend Connect tools. Sigh. I might have to remove their friendconnect widgets.