Google Officially Rolls out New Search Console Speed Report
Yesterday, Google officially rolled out the Speed report in Search Console. It has been a few months since Google announced its (experimental) Search Console Page Speed Report in Google I/O. Very few had access to it when it was first announced since we had to sign up on a form to be eligible to try it out. But ever since its release yesterday, more webmasters now have access of it in their respective Search Console Reports. Here’s what you need to know about this important report:
Speed (experimental) Report
Located under the Enhancements tab of search console, the speed report automatically shows webmasters an overview of their site’s speed report, divided into mobile and desktop pages which are further broken down to the number of mobile and desktop’s slow, moderate, and fast URLs.
Once you dive into the specific device type report, it highlights the issues some of your URLs possess – much like the coverage report.
So far, I’m only seeing two types of issues. FCP and FID issues. Here’s what they mean according to Google:
Google’s PageSpeed Insights is heavily marketed in their Speed Report since it’s one of the best site speed checking and diagnosis tools out on the web. I recommend you use it as well since it helps my team and I pinpoint some of the problems that our pages have and make the appropriate changes to improve our overall page speed score.
Another thing you have to take note of is the way they categorize URLs.
As mentioned, it’s divided into three parts: Slow, moderate, and fast. They did not come up with this metric randomly since they stated that the data is based on the Chrome User Experience Report, which provides metrics for webmasters on how Chrome users experience websites available on the world wide web.
How This Report Can Be Used to Improve SEO
When the Speed Report was first announced in Google I/O, I published a blog post detailing how this report (once it was rolled out) can be used to help improve SEO. Consequently, Google published a post that announced the release of the speed report and how webmasters can use it to better understand their website. Here’s what they said (which are the same assumptions I had a few months ago):
“The report classifies URLs by speed and the issue that causes any slowdowns. Drill down on a specific issue to see examples of slow URLs to help you prioritize performance improvements for them. To get a better sense of what type of optimization can be performed for a specific URL, the report links to the Page Speed Insight tool, which provides information on specific optimization opportunities.
You should use this report both for monitoring your performance over time and for tracking fixes you made to your website. If you fix an issue, use the report to track whether users experienced a performance improvement when browsing the fixed version of your website.
To help you understand how your site is performing, you can also see what types of URLs are doing better by checking the moderate and fast buckets.”
Key Takeaway
We have to remember that this report is purely “experimental”. The data, errors, and recommendations are still strongly subject to improvement. However, seeing it now, it already gives me a good idea of how I work with my developers to better improve my site. The improvements are primarily for search engines, but it is for my visitors. Giving them a much better experience on our websites is important for us and it should be important for all webmasters around the world as well.
If you have any comments and suggestions regarding Search Console’s new report, you can submit a report in their user forum. So, what do you think about the speed report? Let me know in the comments below!
