Warning fired over slow websites

Ensuring that websites are fast is more important now than ever before, it has been claimed.

UKFast's managing director Lawrence Jones stated that companies with slower websites will "suffer" in light of Google's recent decision to factor in speed when calculating AdWords quality scores.

Google made the move after finding that a half a second difference in loading times can lead to a difference in visitor traffic of 20 per cent.

"This is terrible news for businesses who do not take their hosting seriously," Mr Lawrence remarked.

"There has never been a bigger need for speed."

Last year, the SEO Consult blog stated that page load times are becoming less of an issue for websites due to the widespread rollout of high speed broadband internet.

However, it said that not all people are using these fast connections yet and warned that users will be put off by pages that take too long to load.