Earlier this year Matt Cutts put the record straight about website speed or relevance as a ranking factor, see Website Now A Ranking Factor. However in Google’s quest to make the web a faster place for all to enjoy, Google has just launch their new Google image format (WebP) a few days ago and that is set to kill all other formats (JPEG, GIF and PNG files) for speed while maintaining a high level of image quality.
Will Google Place More Emphasis On Website Speed?
It seems that in the near future this could be the case, but will it over take relevance? No, that would be a crazy move on Google’s part and contradict their theory on how search results are ordered!
How Does The Google WebP Format Perform?
Below is an example of the WebP in action (source: Google Gallery). On the left you have a JPEG image with its file size noted below, on the right you have the same photo with file size and compression achieved from the new format.
Please note: web browsers do not currently support the WebP format so the image on the right is a PNG file for display purposes for this example.
What Are The Benefits Of Google WebP?
The main benefit that this new image format will impact on greatly is the mobile browsing niche. A market that is booming around the world and as the technology of smart phones improves and with Telcos continually offering better mobile plans that include larger amounts of data usage for browsing, the mobile market is not about to slow down! This new faster image format will help ensure Google is the search engine of choice for mobile devices.