Another Quality Score Slap: Slow Loading Landing Pages
Written by Pablo Palatnik on March 13, 2008
So, if you thought you had everything figured out with Google’s quality score and they wouldn’t be making any changes anytime soon, think again.
Inside Adwords announces sites with slow loading time will be penalized by its quality score algorithm.
“As part of our continuing efforts to improve the user experience, we will soon incorporate an additional factor into Quality Score: landing page load time. Load time is the amount of time it takes for a user to see the landing page after clicking an ad.
Why are we doing this?
Two reasons: first, users have the best experience when they don’t have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate.
When are we making this change?
In the next few weeks, we will add load time evaluations to the Keyword Analysis page (we’ll notify you when they are available). You will then have one month to review your site and make necessary adjustments.
After the one month review period, this load time factor will be incorporated into your keywords’ Quality Scores. Keywords with landing pages that load very slowly may get lower Quality Scores (and thus higher minimum bids). Conversely, keywords with landing pages that load very quickly may get higher Quality Scores and lower minimum bids.â€
One way to put make sure your page loads quicker then it does now is to make sure your images aren’t too large in size. There is software that makes image files smaller for faster loading times.
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