Definition

Page speed is a measurement of how fast a web page delivers and renders content to a user, captured through field metrics such as the Core Web Vitals and lab metrics from tools such as PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse.

Page speed is not a single number — it is a family of measurements covering server response (Time to First Byte), initial render (First Contentful Paint), main-content render (Largest Contentful Paint) and responsiveness (Interaction to Next Paint). Google uses Core Web Vitals as part of its page experience signals and exposes both field and lab measurements through Search Console and PageSpeed Insights.

Examples

• PageSpeed Insights audit

  A retailer runs a product page through PageSpeed Insights and sees a Largest Contentful Paint of 3.4s on mobile. The Core Web Vitals assessment is marked "needs improvement" and field data from the Chrome User Experience Report appears alongside the lab score.

• Search Console Core Web Vitals report

  Search Console groups a site's URLs into Good, Needs Improvement and Poor buckets based on real-user page speed metrics, letting the team see how many pages fall short of the LCP, INP and CLS thresholds.

Sources

• web.dev — Web performance
• Google Search Central — Page experience in Google Search results

Related terms

• Core Web Vitals
  A set of three Google metrics that measure real-world page experience: loading speed, interactivity and visual stability.
• Largest Contentful Paint
  A Core Web Vitals metric measuring how long the largest visible content element on a page takes to render after loading begins.
• Interaction to Next Paint
  A Core Web Vitals metric measuring how long a page takes to visually respond to a user interaction, sampled across the page's lifetime.
• First Contentful Paint
  A web performance metric measuring the time from page load start to the first visible text, image, or non-blank canvas being rendered.
• Time to First Byte
  A performance metric measuring the time between a request for a page and the first byte of the response arriving back at the browser.
• Page Experience
  Google's umbrella term for signals describing how users perceive a page — Core Web Vitals, HTTPS, mobile usability, and absence of intrusive interstitials.
• Render-Blocking Resources
  Resources — typically CSS and synchronous JavaScript — the browser must fetch and parse before it can paint the first frame of a page.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• SEO Audit
• Page Optimisation