A Cre8asite Forums discussion pointed me over to a UK hosting company named UKFast that has a white paper on Server Speed and SEO.

The paper makes the argument that server speed is a critical component to your SEO campaign. Here are some quotes from the white paper:

Technically, a really slow server can really hurt your rankings in many search engines. But can a super fast server improve your Google rankings? I don’t think so. It might let Googlebot spider more of your pages quicker, but even that seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

You see, what they claim is half-true. If you have a really slow server, it can have a negative impact on your rankings. But having a super fast server, as opposed to a fast server, won’t increase your rankings. I.e. A super fast site won’t rank higher than a fast site, if all else is equal. At least as far as I know.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums.