Google announced on Monday 4th November 2019 that they will be rolling out a new report in Google Search Console to help website owners understand how fast their websites are and which pages could be improved.
This feature may not be available to all just yet but those that do have the report may see that it is labelled “experimental” as Google continue to improve this report and the recommendations that it gives.
What does the Speed report do?
The overview of the Speed report classifies the pages of your website into three main categories of slow URLs, moderate URLs and fast URLs. This is then split out into Mobile and Desktop, so you can easily see how many slow loading pages you have versus fast loading pages by device:
The in-depth reports show you exactly what the speed issues are and then you can drill down into these issues to see which pages are affected by them. This data is great for identifying problem pages on your website and improving the overall experience for users.
Speed has for many years now been a ranking factor in SEO. The quicker your website loads for users and search engines, the better the user experience and the higher the rankings you will achieve.
Tools such as Google Page Speed Insights and GTmetrix should still be used to further analyse the pages to see what elements can be changed to improve the speed of the website. However, this new report from Google will be a great starting point for identifying areas for improvement and monitoring the speed of your website over time.For more information on making your website faster and improving it’s visibility in the search engines, contact the SEO team at Colewood.
