Google constantly modifies its search engine, the most popular to date, to deliver the most useful search results. Two recent changes could have a major impact on how your site is ranked.

Speed matters

Slow sites make users unhappy. A slow-loading page in a search result may well reflect badly on the quality of the search engine. Therefore Google has started to favour fast-loading pages in addition to a page’s overall ‘reputation’ (it’s quality).

To help out, Google offers some advice and tools to test and speed up your site. Most of it’s quite technical, so you might want to turn to your web suppliers for advice.

Your behaviour matters as well

Since a couple of months, Google has been offering personalized search. Google will track your search ‘behaviour’ and use this information to improve your results. So your results might differ from the result your neighbour receives.

So how do you know how you’re doing?

If you keep using the same computer, and disable the personalized results (see Google: Personalized Search: Turning off personalization), you probably get a more or less consistent, neutral, result. Don’t forget that search results will also differ between google.com, google.co.uk or google.be.

A better approach is to look at your website statistics. Note down any major website updates (speed, content, frequency of updates, etc.) and look for changes in the number of visitors that come through Google.

Further reading

• Google Code – Let’s make the web faster
• Google Webmaster Central blog – Using site speed in web search ranking
• Google Blog – Personalized search for everyone

Want to know more?

Google is currently still the most important search engine, but it’s not the only one. Get in touch if you have any questions regarding these recent changes from Google, or anything else on search engines.