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All Google has to do is reward site improvements in critical metrics. That's it. If my page is going to rank higher because it's faster, I will optimize the hel

All Google has to do is reward site improvements in critical metrics. That's it. If my page is going to rank higher because it's faster, I will optimize the hell out of my site. But Google has been really unclear about the amount of impact those improvements have, especially as they compare to building an AMP site that will without question be featured in their carousel.

izacus 7y ago
They did exactly that and you can find several talks about how they prioritize performance. Didn't work.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  It could only be used as a tie-breaker for search results with the same level of confidence, anyway. It would be ridiculous to down-rank the exact thing the user is searching for just because the user would have to wait 800ms longer for that information. Or up-rank something the user isn't looking for just because it loads faster. The best Google can do is bluff about how much perf matters.
  - Kalium 7y ago
    The efficacy of the incentive is linked directly to the strength of its effect. If optimizing the hell out of your company's site only matters in extreme cases where it's a tiebreaker among hundreds of other signals, the people who want the things that make pages slow will win. They will be able to point to more tangible and measurable benefits, and the effect of the tiebreaker will be lost in statistical noise. It may just be unfounded cynicism on my part, but this does not sound like a better web experience. It sounds like the web circa 2009-2015. It sounds, to me, exactly like all the things we'd like to get away from with something less intrusive than AMP.
Kalium 7y ago
What metrics are you thinking of? Page size and load speed are the typical ones. There may be some wrinkles to measuring those well, given how dynamic modern pages often are. That would make any such metrics relatively easily gameable. It might also be challenging to turn measured improvements into measurable gains in SERPs, which means the gains in corporate politics are limited. AMP avoids all of that. It also brings security benefits by getting rid of basically every tag that can be used to mount attacks on the browser. Also, it's been known for quite a long time that users like faster sites, resulting in much lower bounce rates. Was that not enough for you to optimize the hell out of your site? It's been my experience that in a lot of companies, it isn't enough. Marketing or publishing or whichever department can attach dollar amounts to the tracker or ad or whatever they want to add, and devs can only handwave around experience. It's not a winning proposition.

izacus 7y ago

They did exactly that and you can find several talks about how they prioritize performance. Didn't work.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
It could only be used as a tie-breaker for search results with the same level of confidence, anyway. It would be ridiculous to down-rank the exact thing the user is searching for just because the user would have to wait 800ms longer for that information. Or up-rank something the user isn't looking for just because it loads faster. The best Google can do is bluff about how much perf matters.
- Kalium 7y ago
  The efficacy of the incentive is linked directly to the strength of its effect. If optimizing the hell out of your company's site only matters in extreme cases where it's a tiebreaker among hundreds of other signals, the people who want the things that make pages slow will win. They will be able to point to more tangible and measurable benefits, and the effect of the tiebreaker will be lost in statistical noise. It may just be unfounded cynicism on my part, but this does not sound like a better web experience. It sounds like the web circa 2009-2015. It sounds, to me, exactly like all the things we'd like to get away from with something less intrusive than AMP.

Kalium 7y ago

What metrics are you thinking of? Page size and load speed are the typical ones. There may be some wrinkles to measuring those well, given how dynamic modern pages often are. That would make any such metrics relatively easily gameable. It might also be challenging to turn measured improvements into measurable gains in SERPs, which means the gains in corporate politics are limited. AMP avoids all of that. It also brings security benefits by getting rid of basically every tag that can be used to mount attacks on the browser. Also, it's been known for quite a long time that users like faster sites, resulting in much lower bounce rates. Was that not enough for you to optimize the hell out of your site? It's been my experience that in a lot of companies, it isn't enough. Marketing or publishing or whichever department can attach dollar amounts to the tracker or ad or whatever they want to add, and devs can only handwave around experience. It's not a winning proposition.