Google has declared that, from July 2018, pagespeed will turn into a ranking factor in mobile search also since they have been using speed as a ranking signal for desktop search since 2010, and they have named it as “Speed Update”. Speed Update will be targeting only the slowest loading pages and to make it complicated Google has not released any standalone tool to determine whether a website page is affected by this algorithm update. But here some resources that can be helpful in evaluating a website page speed.
- Chrome User Experience Report
- Lighthouse
- PageSpeed Insights
Because they are going to target only slowest loading pages, the update will affect only a small percentage of websites, says Google. They have mentioned the update is standard for all the website pages despite the technology used behind it. The good news for those people who keep following all the rules by Google to get a good ranking will still have it as the search query is still the strongest signal in the ranking of pages. Google is encouraging the developers to think out-of-the-box about how to increase the page speed without affecting the user experience.
Conclusion
This new update means that mobile has become more important than desktop in terms of searching, and the time has come for the search index to reflect that.
