seolounge
Driving slow? Get out of the passing lane! That’s what Google is suggesting with their new Google Search Console messages alerting site owners about really slow pages on their websites. This could potentially affect your SEO!
However, your website must be verified in Google Search Console in order to even be considered for the not-so-positive news. If you do see an alert in your account, it’s time to optimize.
Back in July, 2018, Google announced a Speed Update saying that it was “rolling out for all users.” At that time, it was only affecting mobile results, but seems to be advancing its way towards desktop searches too.
Google’s Zhiheng Wang and Doantam Phan wrote:
The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.
Google recommends you use the new updated PageSpeed report and tools like LightHouse to measure page speed and make improvements.
At that time, Google announced that the Speed Update will “only affect a small percentage of queries”. This tells us that the update is targeted at only the slowest of the slow.
