How Google Measures Site Speed Using Chrome

In October 2017, the Chrome User Experience Report was introduced. It was introduced as a public dataset of user experience metrics for the web and it included performance data in the report aggregated from Chrome users who had opted-in to syncing their browsing history and have usage statistic reporting enabled. What this essentially means is that Google has been collecting performance data through Chrome to measure site speeds.

Having trouble with understanding your website’s analytics?

If you opt-in as a Chrome user, you essentially allow your browser to report back load time metrics to Google.The Chrome User Experience Report covers over 1 million top origins on the web. It is possible by now that it contains data on other domains that are included in this public data set.

John Mueller who is a Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google confirmed that the Google Web Rendering Service was not the way site speed was measured. He explained that Google measures site speed from other data sources.This is because the data set in the report does not cover all domains. However, he didn’t mention what these data sources were. John also pointed out how Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool now includes data from the Chrome User Experience. 

Report:

What does this mean?

In short, we cannot be completely sure on how Google measures site speed. There are several factors that haven’t been mentioned, but we do know for sure that Google uses Chrome to measure it for the most popular domains. So you’re probably wondering at this point how you can make changes to your website so that you get a faster site speed. We know that Google detects changes to your website that even Googlebot is not detecting. So for example, if you deploy HTTP/2 for your users, Google will still be able to detect speed improvements, through factors like Chrome User Experience Reports.

If you’re looking for resources for site speed tips and tricks, check out:

1. How fast is fast enough? Next-gen performance optimization - the 2018 edition by Bastian Grimm
2. Site Speed for Digital Marketers by Mat Clayton