It is a well known fact that search engines such as Google want to provide a good experience to search users.  The better experience you have with a search engine the more likely you will continue to use that search engine.

One of the ways this is measured is through page speed and website pages that load very slow obviously cause user frustration.  Google has a tool that you can use to help you determine your page speed score and this tool is based off of Web Performance Best Practices such as optimize images files for faster download speeds.

Google Page Speed is an open-source Firefox/Firebug Add-on. You can get Firebug here.  Webmasters and web developers can use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of their web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them.

How does Page Speed work? – Page Speed performs several tests on a site’s web server configuration and front-end code. These tests are based on a set of best practices known to enhance web page performance. Webmasters who run Page Speed on their pages get a set of scores for each page, as well as helpful suggestions on how to improve its performance.

Why should you use Page Speed? – By using Page Speed, you can:

• Make your site faster.
• Keep Internet users engaged with your site.
• Reduce your bandwidth and hosting costs.
• Improve the web!

Install Page Speed Firefox Plugin at http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/download.html