For years, Google has said there is a demotion for sites that are incredibly slow to load. Heck, even recently we saw Google test a slow label in the search results for web sites that load really slowly.

But when John Mueller was asked about PageSpeed in a recent Google+ hangout at about the 46 minute mark, John basically hinted that he isn’t sure if it is still being used much as a ranking factor.

John said:

Here is the video clip at the start time of the video:

Maybe I am misunderstanding him but watch how he responds to that question.

Do you think Google is less concern about PageSpeed as a ranking factor. I assume if they find the page way too slow to load, they simply won’t index it, which is not a ranking factor but more of an indexing issue. So maybe Google changed from it being a ranking factor to an indexing factor?

Forum discussion at Google+.