Friday saw Google update their search results taking site speed into consideration.

There weren’t any massive changes (that I have seen) in the search results, with the exception of a couple of my clients:

• Searching for the phrase office furniture lincoln  now puts our client TPS office furniture at the top of the first page.
• Seaching for iPad Deals, has seen another client www.ipad-deals.co.uk becoming the highest listing for a price comparison for this search phrase.

What is interesting is that site speed was going to be part of the “Google Caffeine” launch. So does this mean Google are “phasing in” Caffeine? There are supposed to be 200 individual ranking factors within the Google Caffeine launch, with the following becoming far more important than they have been in the past:

• Bounce Rate / Time Spent on the Website (it seems that Google have decided that how people interact with your site, and how useful they find the information available, will have a major bearing on your sites natural search engine listing).
• Social Media – Google looks to be putting more emphasis on companies social media status.
• Inbound Links – Poor quality links are likely to get penalised (whereas in the past they have remained neutral to search results).

The unofficial launch of Google Caffeine was “before the end of April” – so we might begin to see more “phases” implemented over the next few weeks.