What is PageSpeed Insights, and why is it important?

PageSpeed Insight is essentially a speed-related tool that is available free on Google. It is used to analyze the performance of the page on both the mobile and the desktop. The PageSpeed Insight also works by offering suggestions for enhancing speed and the overall user’s experience. This is done by the analysis of the website’s HTML, CSS, fonts and also the JavaScript. It functions to offer suggestions for the optimisation of the performance of the page.

 This further comprises other factors such as minifying of the codes, compressing the images, and also reducing the number of HTTP requests that have been made by the page. So, why is the Pagespeed insight so important? Let us take a look at some of the main aspects. 

To Use the PageSpeed Insights

• To begin with go to the PageSpeed Insights. 

• Now enter the URL and click on ‘Analyze’.

• Here you will receive an option to switch between the Mobile and the desktop analysis.

• Generally the Mobile scores are much bad as compared to the Desktop scores. 

• This is the point when you will come across more problems to deal with.

The Field Data 

The next section comprises the data acquired from the real users of the website. This data has been acquired by the PageSpeed Insights from the Chrome USer Experience Reports (CrUX). This also comprises the data of the Chrome users who wish to share the data. Located at the very top is another option that allows the users to switch between the origin and the pages which is much similar to the domain level data. This works by aggregating the data for various pages. However, bear in mind that you might not be having all the data for all of the pages and even the origin data. This is in accordance with the number of users that visit the website and wish to share the information. For the record, there have been 29.5 million origins in the CrUX as of April 2023. 

Now, as we proceed to the next section, this is the Core Web Vitals or the CWV. This also comprises the pass/fail assessment. Here the main metrics comprise of the Largest Contentful Paint or the LCP, the First Input Delay or the FID and also the Cumulative Layout Shift or the CLS. These are the CWV metrics that are used by Google for its rankings. 

As seen above, the numbers have been color coded  in order to represent that:

Green = Good

Orange = needs improvement

Red =Poor

Overall, about 75% of the users come across the requirement to meet the threshold set for a certain metric, in order for it to be considered as ‘Good’. Let us take a look at the thresholds:

MetricGood       Needs improvementPoor

LCP2500 ms2500 ms–4000 ms> 4000 ms

FID100 ms100 ms–300 ms> 300 ms

CLS0.1             0.1–0.25            > 0.25

After you click on “expand View’ you will come across the various distribution for every metric:

There are also various additional metrics from the CrUX database that are not presently utilized for the purpose of rankings. Some of these includes: Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Time to First Byte (TTFB), the First Contentful Paint (FCP) and the Time to First Byte-TTFB. However, bear in mind that the INP will be replacing the FID as a CWV metric as of on March 2024.

Here also the numbers have been coded in order to display that:

Green = Good

Orange = Needs improvement

Red = Poor. 

You should know that about 75% of the users come across the requirement to reach the threshold that has been set for the stated metric in order for it to be considered as ‘Good’. Let us take a look at the thresholds:

Metric         Good      Needs improvement    Poor

FCP         1800 ms     1800 ms–3000 ms              > 3000 ms

INP          200 ms     200 ms–500 ms              > 500 ms

TTFB          800 ms      800 ms–1800 ms              > 1800 ms

After you click on ‘Expand View’ you will come across the distribution for every metric. 

The final section ‘tells’ the users about the part where this particular data originates from. Essentially, the data is from the real user experiences and has a rolling average of about 28 day period. 

Lab Data 

Basically the Lighthouse is a an open-sourced tool used for measuring both the quality and the performance of the webpages. The best part is that it can easily be run on your own browser, however in case of PageSpeed Insights, it runs on the server of the Google. Under this feature, you will get to see various numbers for Accessibility, Best Practices, Performance, and also the SEO. These are checked in order to get the best practices, however, they do not tell you about how you are performing in each one of these areas. 

Once done, the metrics get color coded once again to offer you a brief about all that is good and those areas that need to be worked upon. Here we will try and focus on the metric of ‘performance’ as it is one of the main tools for SEO. Firstly, let us take a look at what the Performance score looks like:

Here, the score can fall between 0 and 100. Here the thresholds are as follows:

• Good: scores of 90–100

• Needs improvement: scores of 50–89

• Poor: scores of 0–49

As mentioned previously, one can have a good score, but yet the page will be slow which does not clear the CWV. There are also various other factors such as server load, network conditions, caching and also the user device that can affect the page load time. Nevertheless, only 2% of the pages that are tested acquire a 100 score. The good news is that a decent score of 50 can easily place you on the top 25% of the pages that are tested. 

CONCLUSION

These are some of the key aspects when it comes to What is meant by pagespeed insights and why it is important. Keep following this space for further details.