Website load times are gradually improving, but a new study shows significant variation in performance between sites and geographic regions.
The study of the web monitoring company DebugBear examined data from Google’s Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), which collects real-world metrics across millions of websites.
“The average website takes 1.3 seconds to load the main page content for an average visit,” the report stated, using Google’s Largest Content Paint (LCP) metric to measure when the main content element becomes visible.
While this average LCP time of 1.3 seconds represents a reasonably fast experience, the data shows a wide range of load performance:
On 25% of mobile websites, visitors have to wait more than 2.1 seconds for the main content to appear. For the slowest 1% of websites, even an average page load takes more than 5.7 seconds on mobile The slowest 10% of websites make 10% of users wait more than 5 seconds for LCP on mobile Almost 1% of mobile page loads take about 20 seconds before main content appears
“Even on a fast website, a certain percentage of page views will be slow,” the study says.
Read on to dig deeper into the study to understand how your website’s speed compares to others.
Site speed discrepancies
The data reveals speed divergences between different user experiences, devices and geographic locations:
Desktop sites (average LCP of 1.1 seconds) load faster than mobile sites (1.4 seconds) While 25% of mobile page loads reach LCP in less than 1 second, the 10% take more than 4 seconds In the Central African Republic, a typical mobile LCP is 9.2 seconds (75th percentile) Sweden, Slovenia, Japan and South Korea all had 75th percentile mobile LCPs under 1.7 seconds
“Differences in network connections and device CPU speed mean that visitors from different countries experience the web differently,” the report notes.
The study also found that the most popular sites are faster, with the average LCP for the top 1000 sites being 1.1 seconds compared to 1.4 seconds for the top 10 million sites.
Constant improvement continues
DebugBear’s analysis shows that websites have become increasingly faster on all types of devices over the past few years despite variations.
Similar improvement was seen for other loading metrics, such as First Contentful Paint.
“While changes to the definition of LCP may have affected the data, the First Contentful Paint metric, which is more stable and well-defined, has also improved,” the report states.
The gains could be attributed to faster devices and networks, better website optimization, and improvements to the Chrome browser.
The key conclusion of the study was that “page speed has steadily improved.” However, he also highlighted the wide range of experiences in 2024.
As DebugBear summarized, “A typical visit to a typical website is fast, but you likely visit many websites every day, some slow and some fast.”
Why SEJ cares
This study provides an annual check-in to see how the web is progressing in terms of load performance.
In recent years, Google has emphasized page load times and its Core Web Vitals metrics to measure and encourage better user experiences.
Speed also plays a role in search rankings. However, its precise weight as a classification signal is debated.
How this can help you
SEO professionals can use studies like this to advocate for the priority of page speed in an organization.
This report highlights that even high-performing sites likely have a lower-speed segment of visitors.
Check out the study as a benchmark to see how your site compares to others. If you don’t know where to start, check out the LCP times in the Chrome User Experience Report.
If a segment is well above the 2.1 second threshold for mobile, as highlighted in this study, it may be worth prioritizing your front page optimization efforts.
Segment your page speed data by country for sites with an international audience. Identifying geographic weaknesses can inform performance budgeting and CDN strategies.
Remember you can’t do it all alone. Performance optimization is a collaborative effort between SEO and developers.
Featured Image: jamesteohart/Shutterstock
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