wheel - 8:10 pm on Nov 19, 2009 (gmt 0)

What I don't understand is... how does the speed of any particular site speak to it's relevance?

It doesn't speak to it's relevance. It probably speaks to it's 'usefulness' from a visitor's perspective. As I mentioned, I'm sure I've seen studies that very small delays in page loads means noticeable decrease in conversions. In large numbers your visitors CARE about page load speed and leave if there's any type of delay.

In addition, and I speculate, I bet there's correlation between speed and spam. In other words, it's not just speed alone, but a bunch of other factors AND slow, slow may be another measure of low quality sites.(my main sites are ripping fast. My crap test sites are slow. So for me, this new test is accurate).