Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Using site speed in web search ranking
Google now considers ‘site speed’ an element in its search ranking algorithms. No one wants a slow website, it’s good news for internet users. It may not however be such a great news for bloggers, especially those who have many widgets. As mentioned before (see ‘Blogging Over-stuffing blogs with widgets’), some bloggers have a tendency to over-stuff their blogs with widgets that seem to add little value to the blogs but clutter up and take a lot of time to load. Perhaps it’s time to declutter and remove widgets that are unnecessary or slow down the loading speed excessively.