Slow has always been bad – now it may cost you

It seems there are various rumours floating around that Google is adding yet another criteria to their Quality Score algorithim.
Starting any day now, Google will include the time your landing page takes to load into account. Slow times will mean worse Quality Scores, which in turn create higher minimum bids needed to show your Ads.

Now if you already have Great scores with minimums around the 4-6cent mark (or lower: see below) and you’re bidding higher than this, you probably won’t be affected.

However, if you’re trying to squeeze every last cent out of your bids, you might see some changes if Google thinks your page takes too long to load.

So what should you do to speed up your pages?

#1 optimise your images. Of course, you should be doing this anyway – it’s good for all of your visitors not just the AdWords traffic. ensure every image on your site has the smallest filesize you can get away with while still looking good.

#2 get rid of iframes if you can.. really no need to be using these in 2008 anyway

#3 use fewer redirects (it’s unlikely you’ll be using more than one at most.. if you have to use 301 redirects, Google prefers them)

#4 if you’re like me & have started adding video to landing pages recently – double check that file size! This new change makes it all the more important to choose a player that buffers your video sensibly & quickly, and of course ensures the file itself isn’t too big. I still like Camtasia for this – it comes with a great player built in, creates a thumbnail automatically & is pretty lean with filesizes. What you definitely don’t want to do is have a Windows Media Player embedded in your page! Google won’t like that any more than your visitors will.

Want to know how you perform, check out http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/ (which funnily enough Google recommend on their FAQ as a tool to try – must be love in the search engine world!)

Good luck!