SEO glossary
Page speed
Page speed is how quickly a page becomes visible and usable for a real visitor, measured in a set of timings rather than as a single number.
Google's ranking use of it is narrower than the phrase suggests. What counts is the Core Web Vitals — how fast the main content paints, how quickly the page responds to input, and how much the layout jumps around — measured on real Chrome visits rather than in a lab.
That distinction matters when a lab score and a field score disagree. A synthetic test runs on one simulated connection; field data is your actual visitors on their actual phones. When they conflict, the field data is the one Google uses.
Speed is also a weak ranking factor and a strong conversion factor. It rarely moves a page more than a position or two, and it moves whether people wait around at all — which is usually the better reason to fix it.
Common question
- Is page speed a ranking factor?
- Yes, through Core Web Vitals, and a small one. It matters most as a tie-breaker between pages that are otherwise comparable.
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