Google's John Mueller spoke about the upcoming new Speed Update that is expected some time in July - so any day now. He said that this speed algorithm differs from the one in April 2010 in that it doesn't just measure too slow pages and dings them if they are just too slow, this new Speed Update does work on a "gradual scale" and small gradual improvements to speed can help improve your rankings a little bit, he said.
This is honestly new to me. I thought this new speed update was similar to the one from 8 years ago but the only difference was it now will look at mobile page speed, not just desktop. I was wrong. Google's John Mueller said at the 10:18 minute mark in this morning's hangout, that this speed update is different. He said "It's a bit different than the other speed update that we did, in general, you know maybe like seven or eight years ago where there is no differentiating between like fast and slow." "It's more of a gradual scale," he added. "So the faster you can make your pages the more we can take that into account. And it's not so much that it's like it's too slow or it's faster, " he said.
So making incremental speed updates to your pages will make small improvements to your rankings when this new Speed Update is pushed out. How much will it impact your rankings? John said "a little bit."
Here is the video embed:
Here is the transcript:
It's a bit different than the other speed update that we did, in general, you know maybe like seven or eight years ago where there is no differentiating between like fast and slow.It's more of a gradual scale.
So the faster you can make your pages the more we can take that into account. And it's not so much that it's like it's too slow or it's faster.
Okay so gradual improvements can help me with my rankings?
A little bit.
How do you measure page speed? Well, Google said they use a bunch of metrics, including Google's page speed tool, Lighthouse, how fast the page loads for users and many other metrics they said. So Google won't really tell you if your pages are fast or slow or somewhere in between based on this new Speed Update.
So I guess time will tell in terms of how much of an impact this new Speed Update will matter to most sites in Google. We will of course keep a close eye on it.
Forum discussion at YouTube.
Update: John Mueller clarified:
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
