Search Me On Web (SMOW)

Google Webmasters confirmed that they are working hard to build a new Speed Report in Search Console. This development signals Google’s ongoing commitment to page speed as a critical ranking factor and user experience metric.

Why Google Introduced the Speed Report

Page speed has been a ranking factor for desktop searches since 2010 and for mobile searches since 2018. Despite its importance, many website owners lacked accessible, actionable speed data tied directly to their actual users’ experiences.

Google’s Speed Report in Search Console addresses this gap by surfacing real-world performance data from Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), showing how actual users experience your site’s speed.

What the Speed Report Shows

The report categorizes your pages into three speed buckets:

• Fast — The page loads quickly for users
• Moderate — The page has some speed issues
• Slow — The page is consistently slow for users

These classifications are based on real user data from Chrome, not just lab tests, making them more representative of actual user experiences.

Key Metrics in the Report

The Speed Report centers on First Input Delay (FID) and the First Contentful Paint (FCP):

• First Contentful Paint (FCP) — Measures how quickly content appears on screen. Fast: under 1s, Slow: over 3s
• First Input Delay (FID) — Measures how quickly the page responds to user interaction. Fast: under 50ms, Slow: over 250ms

How to Use the Speed Report

1. Access Search Console at search.google.com/search-console
2. Select your property
3. Navigate to “Speed” under “Experience”
4. Identify pages classified as “Slow”
5. Click on specific URLs for more detail
6. Use the “Open in PageSpeed Insights” option for specific recommendations

Improving Your Speed Scores

Common improvements flagged by PageSpeed Insights:

• Enable text compression (Gzip/Brotli)
• Serve images in next-gen formats (WebP, AVIF)
• Remove unused JavaScript and CSS
• Defer offscreen images with lazy loading
• Eliminate render-blocking resources
• Improve server response times

The Connection to Core Web Vitals

The Speed Report was the predecessor to Google’s Core Web Vitals initiative, which expanded the metrics to include Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). Core Web Vitals became an official ranking factor in 2021 through the Page Experience update.

Understanding and acting on speed data from Search Console remains one of the highest-impact technical SEO activities available to website owners.