EngineWorks

During our SEMpdx SearchFest ’08 on Monday here in Portland, one of the hot topics addressed by Riona MacNamara from Google Webmaster Central was the announcement that Google now has added “page load time” as a component of its AdWords ranking algorithm. This announcement was feature on Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Land in the post titled “Google Adds Page Load Time to Quality Score Algorithm“.

This new criterion takes into account how long it requires a destination page from a Google AdWords listing to load onto a user’s screen. If a significant amount of time passes before the destination URL finishes loading, Google may assign a very low “load time grade” to the AdWords listing. This grade will then be considered as a component of the lisitng’s overall Quality Score, which is used to determine positioning within the relevant Paid Search results.

Riona MacNamara conveyed that the purpose for this new “oad time grade” is to ensure that the ads which provide the best user experience get clicked-on most often.

Therefore, we are recommending that you assess the amount of time it takes for each of your Google AdWords landing pages to load onto a screen, and to take immediate action to improve this load time if necessary. Your AdWords performance could be impacted if you don’t!

If you would like more information on how EngineWorks can assist in your efforts to improve page load time, simply drop us a post on this blog.