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.
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.
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