Now, Chrome will shame sites which take forever to load
If there's anything that's more annoying than no internet, it's a website that loads slowly. Whether it is the slow connection speed or the website itself, waiting for a page to load up is a nightmare for most of us. And, for what it's worth, Google hates that too, so much so that it's working to shame slow-loading sites publicly. Here's what it means.
Labelling sluggish websites with speed badge
Just recently, Google announced its plan to show a slow speed badge on websites which take a long time to load. The company said whenever a user opens a website, Chrome would look at its design and historical load times to determine if it's usually slow. Then, if the answer is yes, it would flag them by displaying the badge.
This could prompt developers to make their sites faster
The slow badge would not only give surfers an idea about sites that are usually slow but also give their developers a push to make necessary changes to make them fast. At this year's Chrome Developer Summit, Google had made a point to speed up the web and is already offering a range of tools to make sites and web apps load quickly.
Meanwhile, fast sites will be rewarded
Along with flagging sluggish sites with slow speed badges, Google will also highlight the fast ones with 'positive' speed badges. However, it's worth noting that the company hasn't defined a fixed badge design for fast or slow-loading pages. It is exploring various ideas, including a splash screen message saying 'usually loads slow' or a green progress bar - for a fast page.
More work to be done in the future
That said, Google will now move ahead with the plan and test the badges with the future releases of Chrome. "Our long-term goal is to define badging for high-quality experiences, which may include signals beyond just speed," the company said, noting that it "will publish updates to this plan as we approach future releases."
