Google Considers Penalizing Slow-Loading Websites

Internet search giant Google is playing with the idea of identifying slow-loading websites by displaying a “Usually loads slow” splash screen in place of a homepage when someone is trying to visit such sites, according to an article in Transport Topics. The move, which Google detailed in a recent blog post, would have a chilling effect on any transportation industry website that Google deems too slow to load. A “Usually loads slow” splash screen served up by Google would pretty much be the kiss of death to your website, encouraging a web surfer to move along to a competitor’s site with better performance.

“I’m hearing from our members of the Transportation Marketing & Sales Association that most don’t think this is going to be good for businesses — but neither is a slow-loading site,” said Brian Everett, the group’s CEO. “I would strongly encourage everyone to evaluate their site speed, because it is so important to their customer’s experience and their site’s search engine ranking and conversion rate. I’d encourage companies to use websites like HubSpot’s Website Grader. It is a free online tool that grades your site against key metrics like performance, speed, mobile readiness, search engine optimization and security.”

Here’s a game plan for getting a great grade from sites like Hubspot — and protecting your trucking website from the splash screen of death:

Get a quick look at how fast your website downloads: Given that Google has a vested interest in a fast web seeded with its advertising, it’s no wonder it offers free tools you can use to quickly assess the speed of your website. Simply type in your site’s web address at Google’s PageSpeed Insights, and you’ll see in a matter of seconds how fast your site’s homepage downloads. Besides offering you an instant rating, PageSpeed Insights also offers you extremely detailed, specific suggestions for speeding up your site, such as changing the format of your images or eliminating unnecessary coding.

Similar tools you can use to quickly analyze the speed of your site include Lighthouse, YSlow and Google Analytics Site Speed Page Timings.

Click here to view Transport Topics original article: The Shame Police: Google Toys With Penalizing Slow-Loading Websites