Google announced details of the new ranking mobile search algorithm last week. The new algorithm has been nicknamed the ‘Speed Update’. Thankfully, the update won’t affect many queries, those affected will only include the pages that give users the slowest experience.

Google Algorithm Update Arriving July 2018

The update isn’t expected until July 2018. There’s plenty of time to correct web pages and ensure they are fast loading. The first place to begin is with the Google recommended PageSpeed report and similar tools that are available. PageSpeed is useful, but be aware of the fact that it only uses data that’s collected from Chrome so the amount of data for smaller sites is limited, resulting in unreliable data. Google does suggest webmasters use LightHouse as an additional tool to measure page speed.

Once the update is live, the same standard is going to be used for all pages on the web. The type of technology that has been used to build the page will have no impact on the result.  However, Google has said that the intent of the search queries is still going to be a strong signal. That means that pages that contain quality and relevant content may still have a high rank even if it is slow to load.

Page Speed Ranking Factor for Desktop

Page speed was announced as a ranking factor by Google in 2010. From then on it has been focused only on desktop searches. The July 2018 update will mean page speed will also be used on mobile pages. Therefore, it’s going to have an impact on mobile search if the site is slow. It is believed that these algorithm changes will affect Desktop search results.