Google changes PageSpeed Insights: news about the tool
In the year in which we were all invited to give more weight to the technical factors that affect the satisfaction of the user’s experience on the site, Google could not help even the tool that for years, Now, it is just to measure the performance and optimize the pages. In fact, the new version of Pagespeed Insights is ready, which exceeds the limits encountered so far by users and is proposed as a perfect ally to overcome the challenges imposed by the Page Experience.
What is PageSpeed Insights
Google Pagespeed Insights (PSI) is a tool that provides reports on the performance of a page on mobile and desktop devices and tips on how to improve that page; among other things, measures the loading time of a URL, calculate a performance score and analyze the website for potential improvements.
Over the years, PSI has evolved into a unique source for field and laboratory data, integrating Chrome UX Report (CrUX) information and Lighthouse diagnostics to provide data that help improve website performance.
However, in recent times the problems with this tool have become more and more evident – which until now has been based on a code that is now 10 years old, which therefore needed a redesign – in particular with regard to the way the data is presented, because there was no clear separation between laboratory and field data.
Therefore, users who did not know enough about Pagespeed Insights had difficulty understanding the context of the data examined, and were therefore not in a position to know what to do with it, also because of the confusion created by the design of the tool.
What this tool is for and what kind of info it shows
As things stand today, the PSI report includes performance data for mobile and desktop devices in individual tabs and suggests how to improve a page.
The key components of the report in each case are similar and provide information on:
- Performance Score
The Performance Score is displayed at the top of the PSI report and summarizes the overall performance of the page. This score is determined by running Lighthouse to collect and analyze the lab data on the page. A score of 90 or higher is considered good, 50-90 must be improved and less than 50 is poor.
- Field data
Field data from the Crux report dataset provides insishts about the user’s real-world experience. The data include metrics such as First Contentful Paint (FCP) and measure Vitals Web Cores; along with those values, you can also see the distribution of pages where the value of a particular metric was Good, Needs improvements or Poor (Good, Needs Improvement, Poor), indicated by green, amber and red bars respectively.
The distribution and scores are displayed based on the page loads for users in the CrUX data set. Scores are calculated for the last 28 days and are not available for new pages where sufficient data may not be available on the actual user.
- Origin Summary
Users can click the Show Origin Summary checkbox to view the aggregate score for metrics for all pages published from the same source in the last 28 days.
- Lab data
The laboratory performance score, calculated using Lighthouse, helps de