I’ve been using the YSlow and Google Page Speed plugins that hook into the Firebug extension for Firefox and it works out fine for my purposes.  But for those who don’t use Firefox or who don’t want to deal with those extensions, GTMetrix is worth checking out.

“Since we’re hearing a lot of talk about the implications of Page Speed, I wonder if Google still cares as much about relevancy? Or are recentness and page load time more important?”,

Matt assured us that content relevance is still the most important ranking factor.   However, he did go on to say,

“If you have two sites that are equally relevant, same backlinks, everything else is the same, you’d probably prefer the one that’s a little bit faster, so page speed can in theory be an interesting idea to try out for a factor in scoring different websites. But, absolutely, relevance is the primary component, and we have over 200 signals in our scoring to try to return the most relevant, the most useful, the most accurate search result that we can find. So, that’s not going to change.”

So what does this mean for you and your SEO strategy?  Your primary focus should still be the relevance of your content (and quality of your backlinks), but its clear that going forward Google is taking a bigger interest in the ‘user experience’.  One of the easier aspects of user experience for Google to evaluate is speed – so its not surprising that this would be incorporated as one of the over 200 ranking factors that Google uses.

If you are happy with the aesthetics, navigation and content of your site why not take the next step and evaluate your page load times.  If speed is an issue on your site and you determine the bottleneck to be server-side then consider upgrading your shared hosting plan to a VPS or even a cloud platform (Even 1and1.com’s has just come out with a cloud platform).  If on the other hand the bottleneck lies with the design of your website (size of the pages, large graphics, multiple lookups etc.) get in contact with an SEO or Web design firm to see if a low-cost ‘clean-up’ can be done.

Check out Matt’s response here.

Matt Cutts on Website Speed as Ranking Factor

Recently we have seen more evidence of Google’s need for speed – the release of the ultrafast Chrome browser (and soon Chrome OS), the launching of Google’s own Public DNS and the development of a faster protocol (SPDY) to replace HTTP.

The latest speed obsessed products from Google are those designed to measure web page speed.

Speed Tracer is a Google Chrome extension that helps you identify and fix performance problems in web applications. The extension helps you detect the slowest parts of accessing your website — be it javascript parsing and execution, CSS style recalculation, DOM event handling etc.

A new labs feature of Google Webmaster Tools tracks website performance over time. It uses information collected from individuals who have the Google Toolbar installed in their browser to compare your websites speed to the aggregate speeds collected – Google tells you in what percentile your site ranks.

So what’s my point? With the latest Google speed obsession focusing on individual site performance we can speculate that from now on your Google search rankings will be affected by this factor. Meaning that if you want to rank high you must have a speedy website.

I gave the guide a brief once over and found it to be a very useful starting point for those who want to make their own website and maybe can’t afford the services of a professional web designer and/or search engine optimizer. Even if you can afford the services of an SEO pro, it’s still nice to understand some of the basics of in-site optimization.

You can find a copy of the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide here.

The interview cited an example where queries such as ‘dog friendly parks in Mountain View’ would show fewer ads as Google feels users typing in these queries are most likely not interested in a product or service.

SES pits itself as the ‘premier event for search engine marketing and optimization’ and while that might be true it still doesnt mean that they attract alot of exhibitors (around 20 by our count). The exhibitors included heavyweights Google and MSN and then an assortment of sem related companies (both local and international).

We spent about an hour and half there on Tuesday morning (arriving during a conference session – so very few people were at the expo). We spent most of our time chatting it up with the Google and MSN people who all seemed very interested in our experiences as sem professional using their products. Unfortunately, half the time they had no idea what we were talking about with regards to Google Adwords and MSN Adcenter. Case in point was the fact that none of the Adwords Googlers knew anything about Google’s recent announcement to charge for the Adwords API (I had to use their laptop to show them the Google PR).

Well at least I got a Google yo-yo!

btw MSN had the weirdest giveaway – MSN Adcenter Napkins (no the napkins aren’t branded – only the package that they came in is)

The calendar can be configured to be integrated right into your Gmail account, for easy viewing of your events and upcoming holidays.

To test out the new Google Calendar system, find it here.

The initial article reporting Yahoo’s new Search-Engine ad model appears in Forbes Magazine.

Yahoo hopes a new ad model will result in an overall greater click through rate and therefore greater revenues. It will be interesting to see what Google’s response will be in terms of potential patent infringement.