Google Quality Scores to incorporate landing page load time

10th March 2008

Google has announced that a new factor is to be incorporated into Quality Score, the search giant's system of determining the relevance of keywords.

Writing on the Inside Adwords blog, the company's Vivian remarks that the process will now include landing page load time - how long it takes a page to load after the user clicks on an ad.

The motivation for the new feature is Google's acknowledgment that it is in the consumer's interest to visit pages that load quickly, with abandonment rates higher - and conversions lower - for slowly-loading pages.

Set to take place over the next few weeks, the new feature's introduction will begin with the addition of load time evaluations to the Keyword Analysis page, following which sites have one month to make adjustments.

Following this period, the load time factor is to be incorporated into keywords' Quality Scores.

Google's Matt Cutts last week told Wired magazine that search engine optimisation, if used responsibly, was a good thing for the internet.