WMT Site Performance - Sites in the top 20%

[BenFox]

Hope this is the right board for it.

I'm using the Site Performance tool in WMT Labs to monitor load speeds but would like to find a handful of fast sites (those within the top 20% bracket) against which to measure myself.

Don't suppose anyone could point me in the right direction for some of those sites?

[coopster]

I think you'll find more activity and assistance in the Website Analytics Forum for your particular question, BenFox.

[Receptional]

Oh. That's tough, because the WMT tools tends to show (in my experience) quite varied results. I can be fast one day and the not so fast another day.

However... try this... use your favorite search engine (or hey... try you SECOND favorite... give competition a chance) to find a speed test site that lets you put in lots of websites.

Then select a dozen or so that rank for your headline term and put them through the tool. Then you have a measure based on your own vertical.

Matt Cutts says that in essence, the website speed card has been overplayed by many. A site needs to be quite adrift before it suffers from a speed penalty. I am sure he was not THIS specific in Las Vegas in November, but what I "heard" from him (in a big crowded room with many other people listening) was that only 1 in 100 search queries "drop" a site on the first page of results. Given that there are 10 results on that page, that suggests only 1 in 1000 sites are getting "penalized" for speed issues.