The speed of your site may affect your google ranking?

According to Google’s Matt Cutts, who was interviewed by WebProNews, that may be the case. “Historically, we haven’t had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast,” says Cutts. “It should be a good experience, and so it’s sort of fair to say that if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don’t want that as much.”

It makes sense to me! I know personally when I try to load a slow site, it generally slows my entire computer down which is frustrating and I try to stay away from those kinds of sites. So if Google knew which sites were faster than others that would be great and save me time. It might also push those with slow sites to take some of the “crap” off or call up their web-designer and have them do a re-design that makes their site faster and rank higher in a Google search (and make it more aesthetically pleasing). Being a web-user, and not a web site maintainer/owner, I can’t really see any kind of downside to this.

What do you think?