Google Chrome has started including a ‘fast page’ label on the link’s context menu on Android. The changes are live in Chrome 85 beta. This would help serve as a metric to assess what to expect in terms of the page’s overall speed.
Google is labeling web pages based on signals from the Core Web Vital metrics, which takes various factors like loading time, responsiveness, and stability of content into consideration.
If a web page satisfies Google’s Web Vital metrics, you will see a fast page label on the context menu, which can be accessed by long-pressing the link. Take a look at the badge in the image below.
Google says that Chrome may also badge a link as ‘fast’ if the URL has been historically fast. “Historical data from a site’s URLs with similar structure 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,” explains Google.
To help developers optimize web pages, Google has updated its developer tools to offer recommendations and relevant resources. Google further mentions that complying with these changes would result in increased engagement, especially for businesses. It would also result in a better ranking in the search engine results page.
You can enable fast labeling right now on Chrome 85 beta. To do so, open chrome://flags and enable “Context menu performance info and remote hint fetching”, followed by restarting the browser. Once fast page labeling gets a wider rollout, Chrome users will see the label when they have switched on Lite mode or Chrome diagnostics.
