Twitter conversation with Gary Ellis

[kexej28769@nongnue]

At the time, Gary was unable to clarify what was being used to evaluate site performance (perhaps because the Chrome User Experience Report had not yet been announced ). However, it seems that things have moved on since then. Google is now able to tell us a little more, which brings us to the Chrome User Experience Report.

Chrome User Experience Report
Introduced in October last year, the Chrome User Experience austria number data is “a public dataset of key user experience metrics for the top people on the web,” under which “the performance data included in the report is from real-world situations, collected from Chrome users who have chosen to sync their browsing history and have usage statistics reporting enabled.”

Basically, some Chrome users allow their browser to report backload time metrics to Google. The report currently has a public dataset for the top 1 million+ origins , although I imagine they have data for far more domains than the ones included in the public dataset.

In March I was at SMX Munich (awesome conference!) , where I chatted with John Muller, along with a small group of SEOs. I asked John how Google evaluates site speed, since Gary had made it clear that it is not WRS. John was kind enough to shed some light on the situation, but at the time, nothing had been published anywhere.