How much does page load time affect SERPS?

[Cairmen]

I've been digging through SEOMoz and couldn't find a straight answer to this, so I thought I'd ask here.

How important is page load time to Google and your SERPS position?

If you're answering, I'd also love to know 1) how you know that your answer is correct and 2) if you've personally seen a webmaster improve his page load time and subsequently his position in the SERPS.

[john4math]

From Google Webmaster Blog, April 9th, 2010 http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html:

While site speed is a new signal, it doesn't carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point. We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing. If you haven't seen much change to your site rankings, then this site speed change possibly did not impact your site.

[AlanMosley]

Good to sees johns answer, as i always thought its overblown.
But having said that, i would be more worried about converion due to load time, if your page takes too long to load you will lose users.

[ChristopherGlaeser]

Agreed.  Indirectly, Google rank has always been affected by load time, because a long load time can increase the bounce rate.

Best,
Christopher