It’s official: Google has added page load time to its algorithm for ranking pages … and this is bad news for websites sporting heavy flash components, overstuffed with graphics and images, videos, and sites created by lazy web designers (that take coding short cuts.)  It also could spell trouble for the average Joe building their own website (the WYSIWYG drag and click build-a-site services are not likely to meet with Google’s new standards and you will not be able to do much about it if you are not able to hack into code.)

Should you dump your Flash site?  I will answer that with another question:  Good lord, you are not really still using Flash throughout your site are you? The majority of website visitors find it annoying and search engines have always snubbed their noses at Flash.  So fancy up your home page, but please, do not repeat the same flash banners page after page after (now page with a lower rank) page.

Gone are the days where great content and “straight” optimization can get you into Google’s page 1 hall of fame.  Now, web masters will need to optimize Java Scripts, compress stuff and pay close attention to how web graphics affect a page, polish up their PHP perfomance, and work harder to be competitive (by the way, we have been doing this for our own clients websites all along  because we specialize in cleaning up websites.  We also make our websites disability accessible because we believe that will be another ditty incorporated into ranking factors in the future.)

So, read up a little about  Google Code – Page Speed and then call your web designer and SEO company and tell them you feel the need for speed.