Greenlight: 4% of Websites Have Page Load Speeds Detrimental to Their Search Marketing Efforts

LONDON, January 20 - According to leading UK-based independent search marketing agency
Greenlight, website page load speeds will become an increasingly important
factor in 2010 for search advertisers, and demonstrates that page load speed
performance cannot be assumed, even for some of the biggest sites in the UK.
In a sample study of 100 of the UK's most popular websites, Greenlight
determined that 4% of them had page load speeds slower than the acceptable
threshold set by Google, beyond which the advertiser may see increased click
costs.

In June 2008, Google revealed landing page download time has an impact on
a marketer's Quality Score in Paid Search. This meant that 'latency' began
contributing directly to a campaign's performance and ultimately it's ROI. At
the close of 2009 there was also much speculation over whether this would
also make its way into its natural search algorithms too. Matt Cutts hinted
quite heavily in that direction in a video interview for Web Pro News, where
he said:

"Historically, we haven't had to use it in our [natural] search rankings,
but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast. It
should be a good experience, and so it's sort of fair to say that if you're a
fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have
an awfully slow site, then maybe users don't want that as much.

"I think a lot of people in 2010 are going to be thinking more
about 'how do I make my site be fast, how do I have it be rich without
writing a bunch of custom JavaScript?'"

Greenlight took a sample survey of 100 of the UK's most popular websites
across four industries - consumer electronics, clothing retail, travel and
finance. It determined these from its independent sector reports which reveal
the most visible websites in Google natural and paid search across various
industry sectors, per quarter.

Greenlight tested their download speeds at the same time of
the day, outside of seasonal peaks in server load and made multiple requests
to get an average. Greenlight's survey found load times ranged from the
exceptional (Argos.co.uk at 0.29 seconds was the standout) to the painfully
high (a top high street electronics retailer at over 15 seconds), and
everything in between.

To define what would constitute an unacceptable average load
time, Greenlight devised a methodology that mirrored Google's method of
determining an acceptable maximum. The threshold Greenlight determined was
4.97 seconds (i.e. 3 seconds above the national average). Anything above this
would almost certainly fall foul of Google's Quality Score download time
guidelines, as outlined by Google.

    Greenlight's results revealed that:

    - 4% of the sites analysed had average page load speeds far in
    excess of the 4.97 seconds determined as the threshold and therefore run
    a risk of seeing increased costs per click.

    - 3% of the sites had average page load speeds in excess of 8
    seconds, which research points to as being the point at which users are
    likely to abandon a site.

    - The best performing sites, in descending order were Argos,
    River Island, Holiday.co.uk, Fool.co.uk, and Comet, all of which were
    exceptional within the group.

    - There was no industry pattern - all sectors had a broad
    spread of high and low page load speeds and the size of the company made
    no difference either.

Google, incidentally, if it were part of this study would have
performed best of all the sites as it had an average page load speed of 0.11
seconds - definitely leading by example.

"Approximately 4% of the UK's most successful websites have
page load speeds that are to the detriment of their Paid Search Quality
Scores," said Andreas Pouros, chief operating officer at Greenlight. "This
affects their Paid Search performance and will be compounded further if
Google decides to use latency in its natural search algorithms too.
Ironically, poor download speed is actually very easily fixed. Businesses
need to look at things like content distribution, cache control, and even
simply reducing the number of HTTP requests their pages make."

As a follow-up to this research Greenlight is preparing a
guide to reducing page load speeds that will be released in Q2 2010.

About Greenlight

Greenlight is an award winning, specialist search marketing agency
providing targeted and accountable natural and paid search solutions. The
agency has helped numerous companies to succeed in search marketing over the
years by improving its clients' positioning and website visibility in the top
search engines, and driving traffic to their websites.

Greenlight provides a full range of search marketing services from
offices in London and New York, including search engine optimisation, pay per
click management, link building, consultancy and SEM training.

Clients include FTSE, NASDAQ and NYSE listed companies as well as
charitable organisations and government bodies. Greenlight works with SMEs,
global brands and top interactive agencies across vertical markets as diverse
as publishing, financial services, retail, travel, hospitality, property and
entertainment.

Greenlight on Linkedin (www.linkedin.com/companies/greenlight)

Greenlight search
(blog.greenlightsearch.com/greenlights_search_blog/search_strategy)
strategy articles on Greenlight's blog

www.greenlightsearch.com/

    Media Contact
    Krishna Rao Beatriz Bailey
    T: +44(0)20-3326-6232 T: +44-(0)20-3326-6233
    E: pr@greenlightsearch.com

Media Contact: Krishna Rao Beatriz Bailey, T: +44(0)20-3326-6232 T: +44-(0)20-3326-6233, E: pr at greenlightsearch.com