Google Speed Update (9 July 2018): What Changed and How to Recover

The Google Speed Update made page speed a ranking factor for mobile searches from 9 July 2018, after Google announced it on 17 January 2018. Speed had been a desktop ranking factor since 2010. Google was clear that only pages delivering the slowest experience would be affected, for a small percentage of queries, and that a slow page with great, relevant content could still rank highly.

It is one of the page experience changes in my full list of Google algorithm updates.

What the Speed Update changed

Before July 2018, speed was officially a ranking factor only for desktop searches. The Speed Update extended that to mobile. Google set clear limits on its reach:

• It "will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users."
• It would affect only a small percentage of queries.
• It applied the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build them. AMP pages got no special treatment.
• "A slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content."

Google gave no single speed metric or threshold. Instead it pointed site owners to the Chrome User Experience Report, Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights to understand how their pages performed.

Timeline

Who was affected

Only the slowest mobile pages, for a small percentage of queries. By Google’s description, the pages at risk were the extreme cases: mobile pages that took a very long time to show anything useful, often because of heavy scripts, oversized images, slow servers or stacks of third-party tags.

How to tell if the Speed Update hit your site

Because the update only touched the slowest pages, the diagnosis is about finding your worst pages, not your average score.

1. Split by device. In Search Console, compare mobile and desktop performance from late June to late July 2018. A speed effect should show on mobile only.
2. Find your slowest templates. Run PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse on one URL per template: home, category, product, article, landing page. A single bad template can be slow on thousands of URLs.
3. Use field data, not just lab scores. Chrome User Experience Report data shows what real users experienced. A page can score well in a lab test on fast hardware and still be slow for people on mid-range phones and mobile networks.
4. Check whether losses match slowness. If your slowest template lost mobile rankings and faster templates did not, speed is a plausible cause. If losses are spread evenly, look elsewhere.
5. Remember Google’s caveat. Strong, relevant pages could still rank while slow. A broad ranking drop is rarely explained by speed alone.

How to recover from the Speed Update

The fix is to move your slowest pages out of the slowest group. You do not need a perfect score; you need to stop being one of the worst experiences for the query.

Work template by template, starting with templates that carry the most mobile search traffic, then re-measure with field data over the following weeks. This is the core of my website speed optimisation services, and server or rendering issues often overlap with technical SEO.

Keep perspective. Google said content relevance still outweighed speed. Making a thin page fast will not make it rank; making a strong page less slow removes a handicap.

Is it still relevant today?

The Speed Update itself is retired. Google’s ranking systems guide lists the page speed system as retired and incorporated into successor systems, namely page experience and Core Web Vitals. The underlying idea continues: Core Web Vitals now give site owners specific, measurable metrics for loading, interactivity and visual stability, which is far more precise than the 2018 guidance.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Google Search Central Blog: Using page speed in mobile search ranking
• Search Engine Land: Google Speed Update now released to all users
• Keywords Everywhere: Speed Update
• Wordtracker: Google’s notable ranking systems

If your mobile pages are slow and your traffic has slipped, request a free audit. My SEO audit finds your slowest templates using real user data and tells you which fixes will make the biggest difference.