Google Testing A Red “Slow” Warning Label In Search Results For Slower Sites

In 2010, Google baked in page speed as a ranking factor into the search algorithm. Since then, Google has released a ton of reports and tools to help you improve your page speed for both users and the algorithm.

But today I spotted via a Google+ post that Google may be testing red “Slow” labels in the mobile search results. The slow label would indicate if a particular web page is slow and warn the user before clicking over to the site that it may load slowly.

Here is a picture from K Neeraj Kayastha:



Of course it is interesting that these two sites labelled as slow are operated by Google.

This reminds me of when Google was testing the mobile-friendly label, which eventually went live in the search results.



http://searchenginel…er-sites-215483

Yeah, and they want to require https at the same time which effectively doubles the amount of data transferred and has very low compression numbers. Getting a bit tired of the big G trying to define what is a positive customer experience and penalizing those who don't agree with their methods.

Actually, in regards to site speed Google is right to put the pressure on. Google can see that slow sites have a massive bounce rate. It makes no sense for Google to send people to slow sites because people will just click the back button if a page load takes longer than 1-2 seconds. Now that the majority of users is mobile and have slow connections site speed is a major issue.



The irony though is that to speed up your page load, its best to disable slow loading 3rd party services like google adsense and google analytics.

It is ultimately benefiting the users. When user is notified about the site slowness many users may not click that particular site. This may now effect the CTR or clicks a site may receive even if the site is ranking in Google and is slow. A warning signal to e-commerce websites that has many product pages along with images of product.