Digiday/Lucia Moses: Google’s emphasis on mobile page speed will hit CNN, WSJ and other top sites

Google’s emphasis on mobile page speed will hit CNN, WSJ and other top sites

January 22, 2018 by Lucia Moses

Google has been using page speed to rank sites for desktop search results, and now it’s getting ready to do the same for mobile. In a blog post published Jan. 17, it said that starting in July, page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches. Google said the “Speed Update,” as it’s called, will affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries.

We decided to see how the top publishers’ sites perform on mobile, using Google’s own speed test. (This list is based on the comScore 200; in cases where the parent company is listed, we used the biggest or flagship site.) A few observations: The sites that ranked fast aren’t all digital natives, and some of the sites that get hyped as tech-forward don’t deliver, at least when it comes to speed. And size isn’t always an advantage: The slowest sites included CNN, MailOnline and The Wall Street Journal.

Publisher     Mobile speed
The Atlantic     fast
Better Homes & Gardens     fast
Business Insider     fast
Bustle     fast
Cosmopolitan     fast
Diply     fast
ESPN     fast
Everyday Health     fast
Gizmodo     fast
The Hill     fast
HuffPost     fast
International Business Times     fast
Los Angeles Times     fast
National Geographic     fast
New York magazine     fast
NY Daily News     fast
NPR     fast
PBS     fast
PopSugar     fast
Refinery29     fast
SheKnows     fast
Verywell     fast
ABC News     average
AOL     average
BBC     average
Bleacher Report     average
CafeMom     average
Complex     average
Fox News     average
Guardian     average
LittleThings     average
Mashable     average
New York Post     average
The New York Times     average
Ozy     average
People     average
Purch     average
Thrillist     average
Upworthy     average
U.S. News & World Report     average
The Telegraph     average
Vice     average
Vox     average
The Washington Post     average
WebMD     average
Wired     average
Yahoo     average
CNN     slow
MailOnline     slow
NBC News     slow
Reuters     slow
The Wall Street Journal     slow
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