It looks like Google may start putting more emphasis on page load times. Already, Google likes sites that load faster and if your site loads faster than your competition’s you will probably rank higher. In the future, if you have huge lag times in your page load time then you may get penalized or perhaps, if it is serious enough, even de-listed.

Why do I say this? Google Analytics has recently announced a new tracking code called asynchronous tracking.

Interestingly, asynchronous tracking is based on page load times. The code itself is supposed to make your pages load faster. Which is a welcome relief for many webmasters because most of us already know that too much code, or too much of the wrong code, can slow down your page load time. If Google Analytics is building new code to make your site load faster, I think that’s a sign.

What about you? Do you think page load time is about to become more important at Google?