In the future, Chrome may identify sites that typically load fast or slow for users with clear badging. This may take a number of forms and we plan to experiment with different options, to determine which provides the most value to our users.
Badging is intended to identify when sites are authored in a way that makes them slow generally, looking at historical load latencies. Further along, we may expand this to include identifying when a page is likely to be slow for a user based on their device and network conditions.
Our early explorations will look at a number of Chrome surfaces, including the loading screen (splash screen), loading progress bar and context-menu for links. The latter could enable insight into typical site speeds so you’re aware before you navigate.
Our plan to identify sites that are fast or slow will take place in gradual steps, based on increasingly stringent criteria. Our long-term goal is to define badging for high-quality experiences, which may include signals beyond just speed.
We are building out speed badging in close collaboration with other teams exploring labelling the quality of experiences at Google. We believe this will ensure that if you are optimizing your site to be fast, your site will not be inconsistently badged from one surface to another.
We are being very mindful with our approach to setting the bar for what is considered a good user experience and hope to land on something that is practically achievable by all developers. We will publish updates to this plan as we approach future releases, but don’t wait to optimize your site. A number of resources are available for learning what opportunities are available to improve your site speed.
To evaluate performance, check:
PageSpeed Insights, an online tool that shows speed field data for your site, alongside suggestions for common optimizations to improve it.
Lighthouse, a lab tool providing personalized advice on how to improve your website across performance and other best practices.
To learn about performance best practices, check web.dev/fast - our learning platform with guides and codelabs on how to get your pages loading instantly.
We are excited to reward you for your work and give our users more transparency into typical site performance. We hope this effort will encourage more sites on the open web to provide the best possible experiences to all users.
Posted by Addy Osmani, Ben Greenstein and Bryan McQuade from the Chrome team
PageSpeed Insights provides the following information:
Lab Data. PSI fetches and analyzes the page using Lighthouse, which simulates how a mobile device loads a page. It computes a set of performance metrics for the page (such as First Contentful Paint and Time to Interactive) and summarizes these metrics with a performance score from 0-100. Scores are categorized into three levels; 90 and up is considered to be a good score.
Field Data. PSI also displays real-world performance metrics (First Contentful Paint and First Input Delay) for the page and its origin. (As a result, we’ve also deprecated the origin: query in PSI). Note that not all sites may have field data available for display. The data set relies on a version of the Chrome User Experience Report that is updated daily and is aggregated over the previous 28 days. Keep in mind that the metrics here may be different from the ones in the Lab Data section as they capture a wide spectrum of real-world network conditions and devices used by Chrome users.
Opportunities.PSI provides suggestions on how to improve the page’s performance metrics. Each suggestion in this section estimates how much faster the page will load if the improvement is implemented.
Diagnostics.This section provides additional information about how a page adheres to best practices for web development.
The PSI v5 API now returns this new analysis together with CrUX data, and all Lighthouse category data (Performance, Progressive Web App, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO) for a given URL.
We have more information about the changes in our FAQ. If you have any questions, please use Stack Overflow and tag your question with the pagespeed-insights tag.
