Definition
Page Speed - How quickly a web page loads and becomes interactive. Measured by Core Web Vitals. Faster pages rank better and convert better - Think with Google's mobile speed research found the probability of a mobile bounce rises 123% as load time goes from 1s to 10s.
In more depth
Page speed encompasses multiple dimensions: how quickly the first content appears (First Contentful Paint), how quickly the main content loads (Largest Contentful Paint), how quickly the page becomes interactive, and how stable the page is during loading (Cumulative Layout Shift). Google's Core Web Vitals programme formalised three of these as ranking signals - LCP, INP, and CLS - measured from real Chrome user data.
The business case for page speed goes beyond rankings. Think with Google's mobile speed research found that as page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, the probability of mobile users bouncing increases by 32%. From 1 to 5 seconds, it's a 90% increase, and by 10 seconds it's a 123% increase. These are not SEO metrics - they're direct revenue metrics. Slow pages lose customers before those customers ever see your product.
For Australian businesses, server location matters significantly for page speed. If your website is hosted on a server in the US or Europe, Australian users experience higher latency than if your server is in Sydney or Melbourne. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) with Australian edge nodes - Cloudflare, Fastly, AWS CloudFront with AU regions - can reduce perceived load times for AU visitors substantially, improving both user experience and Core Web Vitals scores.
Related terms: Core Web Vitals - Crawlability - Indexation
Frequently asked questions
How do I test my page speed?
Use Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) - it's free, gives both lab measurements and real-user data from Google's Chrome User Experience Report, and provides specific fix recommendations. Google Search Console's Core Web Vitals report shows site-wide performance from real users. GTmetrix and WebPageTest are useful for detailed waterfall analysis when you need to diagnose specific bottlenecks.
What is the fastest way to improve page speed?
For most sites, the biggest gains come in order: compress and convert images to WebP format (often 70-90% size reduction), defer non-critical JavaScript, eliminate render-blocking resources in the page head, and use a CDN. For Australian sites specifically, choosing a host or CDN with Australian data centres is often the single highest-impact change.
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