Faster-loading stories will soon appear higher up on your Facebook newsfeed, while slower loading sites will be demoted.
Facebook announced the changes in a blog post on Wednesday. The change, which will roll out over the next few months, is in response to users who have complained about slow-loading cites. According to the company, about 40% of website visitors leave a site if it takes more than three seconds to load.
Facebook will now factor in a user’s current network connection, and the general speed of a website. If both are slow, the link will be lower on your News Feed. The change will also require publishers to make sure their site is up to Facebook’s new speed requirements.
In the past, the company used different factors — like your mobile network, what type of device you’re on, or your Wi-Fi connection — to determine which relevant stories were seen first. The change appears to serve as an additional way to show you what you want faster.
Though most pages won’t see any significant changes to their distribution in News Feed, some sites that are particularly slow could see decreases in referral traffic, according to Facebook.
Separately, a Facebook tool called Instant Articles allows some publishers to publish articles on the platform that load nearly instantly on Facebook’s app.
