The other day I covered how Google's John Mueller implied there was gradual scale to the upcoming Speed Update. John said then "So the faster you can make your pages the more we can take that into account." So I bugged Google's John Mueller about that and he said on Twitter that he wanted to clarify.
In short, the original announcement said this Speed Update "will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users." But if you have a fast site and make it faster, based on how I understood what John said last week it won't just impact the "slowest experience" but also impact faster sites as well.
John's clarification said no, "if your site is reasonably fast, tweaking won't change things," he said. He confirmed four points:
- This only affects the slowest sites
- Those can incrementally improve (though ideally you'd significantly improve the speed...)
- We're still aiming for this month.
- If your site is reasonably fast, tweaking won't change things.
So okay, he reiterates, this only impacts the slowest sites and at the end says fast sites that tweak will not see any change in their rankings. Got it, that is what I thought from the original messaging.
He then shares "Those can incrementally improve (though ideally you'd significantly improve the speed...)" which can be confusing but I think he means slow sites can see huge speed improvements through incrementally changes to their web pages.
And he confirms Google is still aiming to rollout the Speed Update this month - so it has not yet been rolled out yet.
To clarify on the mobile speed update: a) this only affects the slowest sites, b) those can incrementally improve (though ideally you'd significantly improve the speed...), c) we're still aiming for this month. If your site is reasonably fast, tweaking won't change things. https://t.co/4glNAFd0ww
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) July 3, 2018
Forum discussion at Twitter.
