Who wouldn’t want the web to be faster? Well it’s going to get faster, because soon begins a Google-Tax on load times.

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.

My guess is that there is a third benefit - when people click ads and get quick loading pages, they can decide that they don’t like the page and then quickly get back to Google to click another ad. Too many slow landing pages and someone could tire of browsing and either buy something or just give up. Of course, the policy change isn’t being made for that reason.

Nor is it relevant that ads are what slow down tons of pages on the web. If only they could get people to stop putting ads on every single web page.

Maybe I’m a little cynical. But why don’t they just warn people that certain pages are slow loading by placing a tiny tortoise or hare icon just below each ad?

Oh ya. Unnecessary icons would slow page load times and ruin the user experience.