Speed Matters Says Google

IMHO, while site speed is a new signal, it doesn't weigh as much as relevance.

In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below.

Google recommends downloading a Firefox plugin called Firebug. This is well know by coders as a great tool. However, many, if not most website owners will never understand what the speed results mean.

I felt speed was always important and have always kept it optimized.

it is been a Issue before, I think speed test is not a new trend in SEO.

Yes and here is a tool to check the speed of a site.

The news is not good for e-commerce as images need more time to download and customers want to see the image (of the product) from various perspectives.

Originally Posted by joesmith

Yes and here is a tool to check the speed of a site.

The link that you provided checks server speed. This new change is mostly related to the websites ability to open quickly based on the website. The best tool is likely to be the speed tool in Firebug for Firefox.

This isn't your mommas SEO anymore.

Right, I think this new factor would be helpful in increasing the visitors' experiences on sites.

Thanks,

Yes, from what I have read speed does matter and some people are going to have problem fixing these speed related issues if they don't understand thing like CSS.