• Search Engine Land
  • Sections
    • SEO
    • SEM
    • Local
    • Retail
    • Google
    • Bing
    • Social
    • Resources
    • More
    • Home
  • Follow Us
    • Follow
  • Search Engine Land
  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Local
  • Retail
  • Google
  • Bing
  • Social
  • Resources
  • Live
  • More
  • Events
    • Follow
  • SUBSCRIBE

Search Engine Land

Search Engine Land
  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Local
  • Retail
  • Google
  • Bing
  • Social
  • Resources
  • More
  • Newsletters
  • Home
SEO

Google data shows Page Speed update resulted in 15-20% speed increases among slower sites

Webmasters, developers, SEOs and site owners took notice and the results are in: The web is faster, according to Google.

Barry Schwartz on April 4, 2019 at 10:44 am
  • More

Google shared some data around the aftermath of launching its Google Speed Update officially in July 2018. After Google giving site owners notice of the update in January of 2018, Google saw that that the slowest one-third of traffic had performance metrics improve by 15% to 20% in 2018. In contrast, it saw zero improvements in 2017.

What was the Speed Update. The Google Speed Update was first announced in January 2018 as a way to reduce the rankings of very slow mobile pages in the search results. Webmasters, SEOs, developers and site owners then had several months to react and improve their web site performance before the algorithm update rolled out in July 2018.

It appears sites took the update seriously and worked to improve web site speed on mobile and desktop. Google also provided tools and reports Google to measure their site speed, get suggestions on improvements and implement those suggestions.

The results. Google shared the following results around speed improvements it saw a year later:

  • For the slowest one-third of traffic, we saw user-centric performance metrics improve by 15% to 20% in 2018. As a comparison, no improvement was seen in 2017.
  • We observed improvements across the whole web ecosystem. On a per country basis, more than 95% of countries had improved speeds.
  • When a page is slow to load, users are more likely to abandon the navigation. Thanks to these speed improvements, we’ve observed a 20% reduction in abandonment rate for navigations initiated from Search, a metric that site owners can now also measure via the Network Error Logging API available in Chrome.
  • In 2018, developers ran over a billion PageSpeed Insights audits to identify performance optimization opportunities for over 200 million unique urls.

More work to do. I asked one of the main Google players around speed, Ilya Grigorik if he can now retire. Ilya Grigorik is a Web performance engineer at Google and is passionate about speed and performance improvements to the web ecosystem. He said while there have been big improvements, “there is still the other 2/3rds that need a lot more attention.”

Here is his response to me on Twitter:

alas, there is still the other 2/3rds that need a lot more attention.. that said, this was a huge milestone and win for the web in 2018 and I'm excited about all the great work ahead of us — stay tuned.

— Ilya Grigorik (@igrigorik) April 4, 2019

Why it matters. While Google’s originally messaging around the Speed Update was that it would only impact a small percentage of queries and only impact web pages that “deliver the slowest experience to users,” SEOs, webmasters, site owners, etc. clearly responded to the potential that their organic traffic would suffer by having slow site speed. I would suggest you don’t need to a perfect score in the PageSpeed Insights tool, but you should look to continually improve.



About The Author

Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

Related Topics

Channel: SEOGoogle: Algorithm UpdatesGoogle: SEOSEO: Site Speed

We're listening.

Have something to say about this article? Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter or our LinkedIn Group.

Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.
See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS

Lorem ipsum doler this is promo text about SMX events.

February 23, 2021: SMX Report

April 13, 2021: SMX Create

May 18-19, 2021: SMX London

June 8-9, 2021: SMX Paris

June 15-16, 2021: SMX Advanced

August 17, 2021: SMX Convert

November 9-10, 2021: SMX Next

October 2021: SMX Advanced Europe

December 17, 2021: SMX Code

Available On-Demand: SMX

×


Learn More About Our SMX Events

Discover actionable tactics that can help you overcome crucial marketing challenges. Our next conference will be held:

MarTech 2021: March 16-17

MarTech 2021: Sept. 14-15

MarTech 2020: Watch On-Demand

×

Attend MarTech - Click Here


Learn More About Our MarTech Events

White Papers

  • 6 Powerful Ways Experience Analytics Can Help Your Business Now
  • Email Tune-Up: A 5-Point Inspection to Get Your Program in Gear
  • Digital Marketing Report Q4 2020: Benchmarks and Insights for 2021
  • Data SEO – The Next Big Adventure
  • Getting Started with Email Marketing Automation
See More Whitepapers

Webinars

  • How to Avoid the Digital Transformation Trap
  • How to Build a Marketing System of Record
  • Meet BIMI: The brand-boosting email security marketers must have for 2021
See More Webinars

Research Reports

  • Local Marketing Solutions for Multi-Location Businesses
  • Enterprise Digital Asset Management Platforms
  • Identity Resolution Platforms
  • Customer Data Platforms
  • B2B Marketing Automation Platforms
  • Call Analytics Platforms
See More Research

h
Receive daily search news and analysis.
Search Engine Land
Download the Search Engine Land App on iTunes Download the Search Engine Land App on Google Play

Channels

  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Local
  • Retail
  • Google
  • Bing
  • Social

Our Events

  • SMX
  • MarTech

Resources

  • White Papers
  • Research
  • Webinars
  • Search Marketing Expo
  • MarTech Conference

About

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff
  • Connect With Us

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Youtube
  • iOS App
  • Google Play

© 2021 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Your privacy means the world to us. We share your personal information only when you give us explicit permission to do so, and confirm we have your permission each time. Learn more by viewing our privacy policy.Ok