WebProNews

New report shows load times

Speed will be part of the quality score impacting one's keyword buys in Google's AdWords service, with Google now showing landing page load times in the AdWords interface.

Coming to the AdWords keyword diagnostic section near you, or at least your management console, should be the ability to view how Google perceives your landing page load times.

To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, speed is good. As SERoundtable noted, those load times mean money to advertisers.

Put up a landing page that loads faster than ones on comparable servers in a geographic region, and the keyword bid pricing should be favorable. Subjecting visitors to a slow page means a worse quality score.

Google, of course, will punish poor performers. Slow landing pages reflect poorly on the user experience, which people will blame on Google. Even Google has limits on what it will put up with in exchange for money, as has been observed during their push to encourage better all-around quality from their advertisers.

"Starting sometime in mid-June, the landing page load time score will impact your overall quality score and may cost you a lot of money. So be prepared," SERoundtable said. Now's the time to get ready; waiting for June to deal with an average or worse report won't be any fun for webmasters.