The advent of Google Caffeine indicates to me that Google is now “favoring” sites in search engines that practice good usability techniques. I have said time and time again that Google’s mission to make the world’s information accessible to people would begin to reflect in their algorithms, benefitting those who make their sites focused on the user. Accessibility and user centered design is, by no means, a requirement online. However, with Google’s new caffeine program, which favors sites with good load time, it is clear that Google is embarking on the “new rules” of website design. And these rules favor usability.
Here is an article by Chris Silver Smith that succinctly makes the connection between Google, usability, and the new rules of SEO. Here is a great quote:
“I’ve known a lot of top corporations which are involved in very sophisticated paid search marketing and search engine optimization, but few of them are also including usability testing and user-centered design considerations when performing a site redesign. Google has tried to make the importance of user-experience abundantly clear by actually going public with their adoption of page load times in determining search result rankings, but many companies are still not connecting the dots. (Without Usability, You’re not Doing Advanced SEO).”
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