Site Speed and Search & Social Spring Summit

April 21, 2010
 

Site speed has been added to Google’s search ranking algorithm, explaining that if all other things are equal, the faster site provides the better user experience. Bruce says that site speed may have had an effect on rankings even before Google’s official announcement this month. Along with the importance of site performance for the user’s current experience, poor performance in the past can keep users from coming back in the future. Google has said that less than one percent of search queries will be affected by the new algorithm factor, though as Susan points out, one percent of a lot is still a lot.

Dave Snyder, CEO of Second Step Search and co-founder of Search & Social, then talks to Virginia about the upcoming Search & Social Spring Summit, an Internet marketing conference taking place in Tampa, FL, May 3-4. Dave explains the marketing and business community’s hunger for information on social media, and talks about the advanced-level knowledge transfer that will take place at the intimate conference. As the organizers planned the agenda for the event, they made an effort to listen to feedback and now have plans to cover a number of rarely discussed issues in Internet marketing.

Then Susan, Virginia and Michael revisit site speed and the Google Analytics blog’s reminder that asynchronous tracking is a faster way to include Google Analytics tracking on your site. They also discuss additional data that has been added to Google Webmaster Tools, including click-throughs and impressions reported for a page’s average position in search results. Considering that Google uses data like this for every decision the company makes, it’s good that they’re now providing businesses with this information, as well.