Matt Cutts - software engineer at Google discusses the necessity for speed online.

At PubCon, Matt Cutts said Google plans to introduce a new ranking factor into the algorithm i.e. "how fast a site or page loads". Matt described this as one of his 'what to expect in 2010' bullet points in his presentation in Las Vegas. He explained that Google's co-founders want searching to be real fast, as if you're flipping through a magazine. Part of this is making sure faster web pages rank better than slower ones. Matt explained that page speed is a factor in search and AdWords quality score and there's currently a strong push to make it a factor in organic ranking algorithm.