Landing Page Speed Hits Google Quality Score

As I predicted last year, today Google officially incorporated another landing page factor into their quality score algo. The new quality score factor is page load time.

It seems what Google is trying to do is prevent multiple redirects. For example, if you click the Sony Style ad on this SERP you will see it has no less than 5 redirects. That’s the major issue being addressed though it will be interesting to see as noted above if there is any other design, tracking or testing practices that could come into play in a negative way for minimum CPCs.

Besides multiple domain redirects for things like analytics and tracking, potentially this could have an impact on landing pages that use javascript to make calls for content, AJAX for navigation and forms, as well as flash and video use. No other guidelines were issued around speed so we’ll have to see how sensitive the variances are.