Page Speed Definition & Meaning

What Is Page Speed?

Page speed refers to the amount of time it takes for content on a web page to load in the browser. The page speed metric is a verified Google ranking factor for mobile and desktop searches.

Page speed value depends on different factors, such as hosting, display advertisements, on-page animations, the size of photos, and the use of videos on the page. The amount of HTML code and the number of linked CSS stylesheets and JavaScript files are other factors that are known to severely impact page speed.

Slow page speeds usually result in high bounce rates and have a negative impact on search engine rankings. In other words, most users won’t wait for a page to load fully if it takes too much time, which is a negative user experience signal that search engine algorithms take into consideration.

According to the Google PageSpeed Insight tool, the optimal value for this metric is 90 or higher. Pages with load times between 50 and 89 require optimization, while any value below 50 is considered bad.

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