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

Is your site unusually slow? Google is testing a red slow label in the search results that will warn searchers before they click over to your web site.

Barry Schwartz on February 25, 2015 at 9:34 am

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.

We have reached out to Google for a comment on this slow icon and if/when we hear back, we will update this story.

Postscript: A Google spokesperson told us “we’re always experimenting” when we asked them about this specific test.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.