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In the digital age, monitoring and improving your website's performance is essential to ensuring an excellent user experience and maintaining a competitive position in Google search results. This is where Core Web Vitals come in , a set of metrics proposed by Google to evaluate the quality of a website's user experience, which we've discussed extensively in various other posts.
But often, simply looking at how your website is performing isn't enough.
Indeed, it often becomes necessary to examine and compare performance metrics not only for your own site, but also for those of third parties, such as competitors. This can be extremely useful for understanding changes in Google's SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and understanding the performance changes that have allowed another site in the same niche to outrank you.
You may also be called in as a consultant to work on a site for which you have no prior knowledge. In these cases, having a historical view of the CRUX Core Web Vitals data can help you understand the changes that may have led to a performance decline. This information is invaluable for directing your efforts and proposing effective solutions.
Additionally, as a consultant or website manager, you may need to report the results achieved from application or system interventions on the site. In this scenario, you may be required to submit impartial reports demonstrating the work done and, more importantly, the results achieved. CRUX Core Web Vitals data history can provide an objective picture of the improvements achieved, supporting your claims with concrete data.
In this article, we'll walk you through several methods for viewing historical CRUX Core Web Vitals data from other sites, helping you navigate this challenge and equipping you with the tools you need to make your website the best it can be.
Examining this data can be a challenging task, as Google, for privacy reasons, doesn't offer direct access to this data for each site. However, there are several ways to gain a historical overview of a site's Core Web Vitals . Let's look at how:
1. Using CrUX Dashboard:
To provide developers and website owners with a clear and complete picture of a site's performance, Google has made a public CrUX Dashboard available on the data visualization platform Data Studio. This powerful tool provides detailed insight into the performance of a web origin, allowing you to dig deep into various crucial aspects of the user experience.
Among the metrics available in the CrUX Dashboard are the Core Web Vitals , three key indicators introduced by Google to evaluate user experience on a website. These include:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the time it takes to load the largest content item visible in the viewport. A fast LCP means that your site's core content loads quickly, which is critical to ensuring a quality user experience.
- First Input Delay (FID): Quantifies the time elapsed between the first user input (for example, a click or a pressure on the keyboard) and the moment in which the browser is able to respond to this input. A short FID ensures that the site responds promptly to user interactions, improving its perception of responsiveness and fluidity.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures the site's visual stability, i.e. how much the page layout changes during loading. A low CLS means that page elements don't move unexpectedly while the user is browsing, contributing to a more pleasant user experience.
The CrUX Dashboard allows you to view and analyze the trend of these metrics over time, providing valuable information to identify any performance problems and to monitor the effectiveness of the implemented solutions. In addition, with the ability to examine data from multiple sources, you can compare your site's performance against competitor or benchmark sites.
2. Using BigQuery:
If you're familiar with the SQL language and comfortable in the BigQuery environment, a powerful resource is waiting for you: Google's CrUX public dataset, available right on BigQuery. But before we get into that, what exactly is BigQuery?
BigQuery is a data warehouse infrastructure from Google that enables the analysis of large amounts of data in near real time. Designed to be versatile and scalable, BigQuery allows you to execute complex queries on huge volumes of data in seconds, using the SQL language. This makes it a powerful tool for data analysts, developers, and anyone who needs to process large data sets quickly and efficiently.
Returning to the CrUX public dataset, this is a database that Google makes available for free on BigQuery. The CrUX dataset is updated monthly and provides a detailed overview of the performance of millions of websites, based on data collected from real Chrome users.
The information in this dataset includes detailed metrics related to Core Web Vitals , such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). These metrics are crucial for understanding the user experience of a website.
Using BigQuery to query the CrUX dataset, you can extract and analyze source-specific data, allowing you to monitor the evolution of Core Web Vitals over time. This can provide valuable insights into identifying your website's strengths and areas for improvement, or analyzing the performance of competing sites.
Keep in mind that while using the CrUX dataset on BigQuery is free, there may be costs associated with running queries in BigQuery. However, these costs are usually very modest, and Google offers a free monthly credit that can cover many of the basic operations.
3. Use of Third Party Services:
There are several third-party services that offer detailed CrUX data analysis. Some of these services can provide historical Core Web Vitals data for specific sites. Here are a few:
- Speed Curve: This service offers an overview of the metrics Core Web Vitals and other site performance metrics. SpeedCurve can monitor and analyze historical CrUX data for a specific website, providing in-depth details and useful suggestions for optimizing performance. Speed Curve
- Caliber: Caliber offers a site performance monitoring tool that includes metrics Core Web Vitals. You can set up periodic reports and create a historical picture of a site's performance. Caliber
- WebPageTest: While it does not provide direct access to CrUX data, WebPageTest can perform extensive site performance tests, including a metrics check Core Web Vitals. WebPageTest
- treo.shDefinitely our favorite, TREO SiteSpeed improves the speed of your website to build a better UX (User Experience), increase conversions and boost SEO. Treo Site Speed uses data from Core Web Vitals from the Chrome UX Report (CrUX) and provides the most comprehensive site speed report on the market. Treo SiteSpeed
4. Monitoring with performance testing tools:
While access to Google's CRUX data can give you valuable insights into your site's performance over time, it's not the only resource at your disposal. There are specialized tools, such as Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights, that give you a more immediate and detailed perspective on how your site is performing and how you can improve your performance compared to the industry averages.
Lighthouse is an open-source automated tool from Google that analyzes web pages and provides suggestions for improvement. You can run Lighthouse on any web page, whether public or requiring authentication. It examines various aspects of the page, including performance, accessibility, best practices, SEO, and, of course, Core Web Vitals . Each category is evaluated and assigned a score, with detailed suggestions for improvement in each area.
On the other hand, PageSpeed Insights is another Google tool that analyzes a web page's content and generates suggestions for making it faster. This includes analyzing Core Web Vitals , along with other aspects of page performance. PageSpeed Insights combines lab data with field data, providing both synthetic and real-world metrics, offering a comprehensive picture of page performance.
Both of these tools are extremely useful for getting detailed insight into your site's performance, with suggestions on how to improve it. You can use this information to identify areas of weakness in your site and develop effective strategies to improve user experience.
It's important to remember that the ultimate goal should always be to optimize the user experience on your site. Satisfied users are more likely to interact with your site, return to it, and recommend it to others. Then, use the insights you've gathered to figure out where you can improve and to set realistic benchmarks for your performance. By doing this, you will be able to offer a superior user experience, improve your search engine rankings, and ultimately achieve online success.
Optimize your website experience with our website consulting services Core Web Vitals
Understanding and improving your site's Core Web Vitals may seem like a challenge, but it shouldn't be a journey you have to undertake alone. Our team of expert consultants is here to help. We have extensive experience analyzing and optimizing Core Web Vitals for clients across a wide range of industries. Whether you're looking to improve your site's loading speed, reduce input lag, or ensure your site's layout remains stable while loading, we're here to help.
With our consulting services, we'll conduct a comprehensive assessment of your site's core web vitals , identifying areas requiring improvement and proposing tailored solutions to optimize the user experience. We don't just provide you with a list of issues; we'll work with you to implement changes and monitor the results, ensuring the changes we make deliver the desired improvements.
Additionally, we offer training and ongoing support to help you understand how Core Web Vitals impact your site's performance and how you can continue to monitor and improve them over time . This way, you'll not only offer the best possible experience to your users, but you'll also improve your search engine rankings, increasing your site's visibility and conversion potential.
Contact our team today to learn more about our Core Web Vitals consulting services and discover how we can help you transform your website experience.
