• SEO by the SEA, Wednesday, August 5, 2009 5:16 PM

Does the time it takes for a page to load on a Web site influence SEO? Although search engines likely consider Web page content, links and link text, they also might look at how quickly pages load and render in a browser, how much people might tolerate when pages load slowly, and how good an experience Web sites might deliver to their visitors, Bill Slawski writes.

A U.S. patent application published in late July reveals a method and system to "characterize in some manner the performance that a user may experience when accessing a web document" to determine rankings in SERPs. He writes that while the patent application doesn't indicate if any search engines use the process described in the filing, it does provide some ideas on ways that a search engine might use information about page load and rendering times, and information on how people might react to those wait times.

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