Last Monday in a remarkable presentation at Pubcon, Matt Cutts has revealed that there is a strong possibility that Google might start considering loading speed of a site while ranking it. He said that the this parameter is under the review for quite some time now and lately it has caught a strong wind behind it through several lobbies within Google.
To know more on this topic, see the webpronews video below that features the Matt Cutts interview.
He said that Google's aim has always been to provide it's users with fast and most relevant search results. And with perception like that how could they overlook the speed factor. After all there's no use having a SERP full of relevant results that take ages to load. That's definitely not where the future of search lies. Specially when real time search is gaining more and more wind, this discrepancy is annoying not only from users point of view but also from that of Google's.
There's already around 200 parameters that Google consider in their algo, it could very well be an addition to the list shortly.
Though it might not be the most important factor, but still it could very well be decisive in its own term. So I think the time is not very far when webmaster's will start optimizing the speed for their sites.
To know more on this topic, see the webpronews video below that features the Matt Cutts interview.