This morning, July 9th, Google has begun rolling out the Google Speed Update that they first announced in January 2018. Google has updated their blog post this morning, as I wrote at Search Engine Land, "Update July 9, 2018: The Speed Update is now rolling out for all users."
Google did not add any more detail but did post on Twitter the following information:
The Speed Update, which enables page speed in mobile search ranking📱, is now rolling out for all users!
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) July 9, 2018
More details on Webmaster Central 👉 https://t.co/fF40GJZik0
I spotted it first from Google's Juan Felipe Rincon and Takeaki Kanaya who posted it in their regional languages first:
A atualização de velocidade que considera a velocidade das páginas nos posicionamentos móveis está sendo lançada para todos os usuários - detalhes: https://t.co/wQQySp7Ecw
— Juan Felipe Rincón (@jfrprr) July 9, 2018
ページの読み込み速度をモバイル📱検索のランキング要素として使用する Speed Update を、全てのユーザーを対象にロールアウトを開始しました！
— 金谷 武明 Takeaki Kanaya (@jumpingknee) July 9, 2018
詳しい情報はブログをご覧下さい 👉 https://t.co/EcWFaaNE0G
Both just say it is rolling out today and repeat a bit of the blog post.
We had some confusion around this mobile Speed Update, which we got clarification on last week. In short, these are the important points:
- Only affects the slowest mobile sites
- Incremental improve to your site can make big impacts in speed
- Fast sites that go faster won't see a ranking improvement
Of course, the big news is that it is live today, rolling out now. So if you see your mobile traffic change - i.e. get better or worse, that may be related to this change. If you have a slow mobile site and you see less traffic from Google and Google Search Console shows you ranking changes with mobile - then it might be related to this Speed Update. If you see more traffic, it might mean that your competitors are slow, super slow, on mobile.
So keep an eye on Google Search Console reporting and your traffic. I don't believe Google will be sending notifications to webmasters that they are slow, since this is algorithmic.
As part of the original announcement, Google points webmasters to look at the new PageInsights report over here, also check the Chrome user experience report and use the Lighthouse tool.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
