Google Testing A Red “Slow” Label In The 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.

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 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.