According to an announcement by Google, optimizations related to Core Web Vitals (CWV) have saved Chrome users more than 10,000 years in page load time in 2023.
CWV are a set of metrics developed by Google to quantify the user experience on web pages.
The three key metrics are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures load time by looking at when the main content is rendered; First Input Delay (FID), which measures responsiveness through the time from user click to browser response; Interaction to Next Paint (INP), which assesses a page’s overall responsiveness to user interactions; and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which measures visual stability by tracking unexpected layout changes.
By optimizing for these metrics, websites can deliver better user experiences.
Calculating The Time Savings
Google’s Chrome team analyzed real-world data from millions of website visits to estimate the time saved by CWV optimizations. The 10,000+ years refers to the cumulative time saved across all Chrome desktop and mobile users this year.
Specifically, optimizations related to CWV have saved Chrome users over 8,000 years in page load time on Android devices and over 2,000 years on desktop so far this year. Additional savings were seen in page response metrics, totaling over 1,200 years.
Google detailed various technical improvements implemented in Chrome, such as pre-connecting resources and rendering optimizations. For example, prioritizing image loading over other tasks reduced layout shift and improved LCP by over 5% on mobile.
The company also highlighted the progress the broader web community made, including significant speed boosts on WordPress, JavaScript frameworks like React and Angular, and sites like Amazon and Cricbuzz. WordPress 6.3 loads pages up to 27% faster than previous versions.
Looking Ahead
Introduced in 2020, over 40% of websites meet the CWV thresholds today.
That means work remains to be done, as over half of the sites still need to meet CWV thresholds. But the progress so far shows the impact a focus on user experience can have.
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