Yesterday there was some talks in the forums about how sites that load slowly and are using google adwords to promote them, can see their quality score lowered. Google uses a number of factors in determining quality score but this appears to be a new one. This is from the Google AdWords FAQ:

Beginning in February 2008, you’ll be able to see a grade for your website’s load time in your AdWords account. ‘Load time’ refers to the amount of time it takes for a user to arrive at your functional landing page after clicking your ad.

Several weeks after your load time grade becomes visible, it will begin to impact your landing page quality and, therefore, your Quality Score. We recommend working to improve your load time during this interim if it’s received a low score.

Google offers a few tips in terms of bettering your load times

- Using fewer redirects
- Using smaller, more highly-compressed images
- Limiting use of iframes

Other factors like use of external stylesheets and javascript calls (limiting javascript as much as possible), global headers & footers, and fewer http requests also can help.