How fast the winners answer

Assistants fetch pages while writing an answer, and they do not wait long. Competitor speed measures how quickly the competitors beating you start responding. Your own pages are measured by the same code on the same network, so the comparison is fair.

Measured to be comparable

Time to first byte, the moment a page starts to respond, taken from our network for your pages and theirs alike. It is a median over many days. One bad afternoon on somebody’s server is not a finding about them, and it is not allowed to become one.

Two measurements, kept apart

Real-user speed, what real visitors experienced over 28 days by Chrome’s own count, is shown separately where Google publishes it. It answers a different question, so the 2 are never mixed into one number.

What to do with itIf the sites winning your questions start responding much faster than yours, page speed stops being a nicety. A fetch that times out while the answer is being written is a citation that goes to someone else.

Next: Refresh tempo →

Updated 23 September 2026. Something unclear? Write to [email protected]. A person reads it.