Google To Label Slow Websites With Warning Badges?

Google Search Dominance

You don't need to refer to charts, reports, statistics or anything else to come to the realisation that Google, in its various guises, dominates the search landscape.

It's often said that between the regular search market which we all know and use and other platforms such as Google Maps, Google Images, Google My Business and YouTube that Google accounts for between 80 and 90% of search business.

And, although Amazon's own internal search engine will likely grow in time, Google's dominance isn't likely to diminish significantly any time soon and other search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, Duck Duck Go are unlkely to challenge either, tiny is their market share by comparison.

Google Ranking Factors

It's said that Google uses around 200 factors in order to decide which sites occupy which positions in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) but one which is accepted as being of particular importance is a site's loading speed.

This means exactly what it says ie how long does it take a site to load onto a searcher's device. Now, there are many reasons why a site might not load as quickly as required and they're not all controlable by the site developer (you). Outside issues such as the searcher's age and type of device, their location, quality of connection etc etc can have a less than beneficial impact on their search experience but as the site developer you need to minimise the impact your efforts have on it.

Optomise Your SEO Efforts

This means that you have to optimise your SEO efforts in an effort to overcome all of the factors you can't control, as above, and one of those is to make sure your site loads as quickly as possible.

In practical terms, the searcher will likely click away from a site if it takes several seconds to load and look for another that they can view "instantly".

Google User Experience

Google wants to give a searcher on its platform the very best User Experience (UX) and a site that loads at the speed of an ocean going tanker isn't going to cut it for them or the searcher.

So what does all that mean?

The Chromium Blog

According to the Chromium Blog, "......Chrome may identify sites that typically load fast or slow for users with clear badging."

The images show how Chrome may help searchers identify that the site they've clicked on is a slow loader.......don't be that site!

Now, the optimum word in Chrome's announcement is "may" but their intentions seem pretty clear, that is, if you don't want your site to be badged in some way as being "slow" then you have to make sure that it isn't because a "slow" site will not fit into Google's UX criteria and the site will probably end up nowhere near the top pages.

As the old joke goes "Where's the best places to hide a dead body? On page 4 of Google because nobody ever goes there!"
Contained within the Chromium Blog are several links that can help you check your site's own load speed and how you can improve it. You should check them out if you don't want your site and business to be lost in the backwaters of the SERPs.
https://blog.chromium.org/2019/11/moving-towards-faster-web.html
Happy hunting

Mark