Google Web Page Speed Times

[AussieDave]

When I conduct a search on Google.com.au the number of sites which are not .au is staggering. I was always under the impression a Countries tld extension, would take precedence over other domains, if, it presented what the searcher was looking for. Even with a domain registered and hosted in OZ, it doesn't seem to make any difference either.

A few weeks back after becoming more and more disenchanted, I ran a number of web page speed tests, from different locations throughout the world. One of these was from Melbourne and my server is in Sydney (600 miles away). Would you believe the test from the USA, loaded the page noticeably quicker over the 3 tests than I got from the local test.

Pre the Google shake up, we were told to host where your target traffic is. But I'm not too sure if that's true now. How much do you think Google uses page loading speed to determine its rankings?

 

[TheGooner]

Not much. I've read the discussion about it too.

But it always seemed bogus to me - as page speed is hardly an indication of quality information.
A blank page loads fastest - but who wants to see it?

 

[AussieDave]

Out of interest TheGooner, what Country do you host from?

 

[TheGamblingGuru]

If you've got a slow loading page the visitor will most likely never know if there is "Quality" info there or not, because they won't stick around long enough to find out! Best get your main page loading quick so the visitors will know.

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[Online18Casino]

I agree... If you page seems to load slow to you or your visitors I would try to solve that issue. But if your just running speed tests and worried about 1/10 of a second or something, I doubt it matters much.. Time could be better spent in other areas.

 

[AussieDave]

In the USA there is multiple backbones with massive amounts of bandwidth. For instance, I can generally download a file at 1.5M/sec using Steam from a US mirror. The same file using a mirror in OZ and reaching 700Kb/sec is excellent. Running the speed tests (WP site running 12 plugins, global header banner rotation and text/footer) I get a load time all up of 2.1sec on 1'st pass, .450sec 2'nd pass. But run the same test again and it blow out to 5sec total load time. This fluctuation in load times is what has me wondering if I'm better getting a server in the US. It would be a lot cheaper but also it would probably mean the site would load fast too. What ppls thoughts on that?

 

[Hazo]

Server location has never been a ranking factor.

Page speed doesn't get taken into consideration unless it gets to a point where it's so slow that Google needs to take some sort of action. This is what I gathered from reading up on this issue from official Google sources. Going from kind of slow/average to fast/faster won't change anything.