Starting in July, Google will include page speed among the factors that determine mobile search optimisation and by extension, page ranking in search results.
Advertisers and agencies have six months to optimise digital assets for mobile-based search, with existing issues identified by the updated PageSpeed Insights tool.
Page speed has been a ranking factor for desktop-based search since 2010.
"We encourage developers to think broadly about how performance affects a user’s experience of their page and to consider a variety of user-experience metrics," Doantam Phan, a Google product manager, said in an announcement post.
While slow sites with quality content still stand a chance, over time page speed will outweigh content strategy as a measure of a site's value to a user, the company added.
Google is rewarding advertisers and agencies that create digital assets that allow users of Google Search to go from query to answer in the shortest time possible while retaining relevance.