Chrome will label ‘high quality’ websites, starting with ‘Fast pages’

Abner Li | Aug 17 2020 - 9:33 am PT

Earlier this year, Google announced Core Web Vitals as a metric for building fast sites. In addition to being used for ranking Search results, Chrome will now leverage those measurements to label “Fast pages” and other “high quality” sites.

Labeling is based on signals from the Core Web Vitals metrics that quantify key aspects of users’ experience, as experienced by real-world Chrome users. The Core Web Vitals metrics measure dimensions of web usability such as loading time, responsiveness, and the stability of content as it loads, and define thresholds for these metrics to set a bar for providing a good user experience.

When long pressing links, the context/actions menu that lets you open in a new tab, copy, share, etc. will soon include a “Fast page” label with an accompanying blue checkmark. It indicates how “most users navigating to [that site] have a particularly good experience.”

This feature is particularly aimed at those with slow or unreliable internet connections. Meanwhile, it’s meant to encourage developers to update their sites with modern practices.

Fast page labeling will start with the Chrome 85 Beta. Over time, Google plans to add other markers that are “most representative of a user’s overall experience.” The company plans to update the Core Web Vitals annually, while labeling might appear in other parts of the Chrome browser.

“Fast page” labeling may badge a link as fast if the URL (or URLs like it) have been historically fast for other users. When labeling, historical data from a site’s URLs with similar structures are aggregated together. Historical data is evaluated on a host-by-host basis when the URL data is insufficient to assess speed or is unavailable, for example, when the URL is new or less popular.

Users can enable now by enabling this experiment in chrome://flags: