The speed at which your web page loads does not affect Google, says Matt Cutts

This means that your web server can serve pages up at any speed, as long as your web server does actually serve the page up. If your web server is slow, or your connection is slow, then Google will still index the page and this will not affect your web page's ranking in the search engine results.

This is great news for people that wish to host their own web site on their DSL line. But, should you be hosting a web site on your DSL line in the first place? It has been noted that contended lines (connections that have a delay) are not suitable for hosting web sites. Although you may not have any other option. If you have specialist services that you require of your web server, or your hosting company will not allow you to host the content you wish to host, or your budgets restrict your hosting services, then you may not have any other option.

So, Google is happy to wait for your content, but how long will it wait for? A realistic time would be a maximum of 5 seconds, although Google would most probably wait a little longer depending on how popular your web site already is. If your web server has delivered content in less than 5 seconds before, then you will most probably be given a second chance to deliver the content again.

Some people say that web sites hosted on dedicated servers rank higher in the search engine results, than on a shared hosting service. This would then re-mystify the problem. Please comment on this post and lets put this issue to bed.

Have you had any problems with your web pages being indexed by Google? And what hosting services do you use?