We have spoken a lot of Core Web Vitals ever since they were introduced by Google back in May of last year. But what we haven’t done – yet – is to actually provides some names of brands, retailers, and organizations that are both excelling when it comes to delivering strong website metrics as well as struggling.
So let’s go through the best examples of websites when it comes to Core Web Vitals as well as the unfortunate companies that currently receive the worst scores.
But now only that, we will build out from the Core Web Vitals and take a look at the broader website metric landscape and the best and worst there, too.
Largest Contentful Paint
The champion
When it comes to the best performer of Largest Contentful Paint, top of the class is Wikipedia. Wikipedia implements a lightweight approach in terms of web design. It also uses optimized images as well as being text-dominant.
Google’s benchmark for Largest Contentful Paint is 2.5 seconds.
Of course, Wikipedia consists of millions of pages, but its average score in Largest Contentful Paint is between 0.4 and 0.6 seconds.
The slowest
When it comes to the worst performer of Largest Contentful Paint, the slowest in the class is Khan Academy. The online elearning platform is, of course, primarily a video content platform consisting of virtual classes. And that makes pages much slower to load, contributing to a poor user experience.
Khan Academy has an average score that is 10 seconds – with some of its pages taking 20 seconds!
Cumulative Layout Shift
The champion
When it comes to the best performer of Cumulative Layout Shift, top of the class is… again, Wikipedia. Lots of its pages have a Cumulative Layout Shift score of 0!
Google’s benchmark for Cumulative Layout Shift is 0.1 seconds.
The explanation is that Wikipedia uses quite a fixed layout for the vast majority of its pages. Plus, the website doesn’t run advertisements and so can limit its amount of dynamic content.
The slowest
When it comes to the worst performer of Cumulative Layout Shift, the slowest in the class is The Spruce Eats. The recipe website struggles with visual stability, caused by pop-ups and advertisements.
The Spruce Eats has a Cumulative Layout Shift score of 0.99 seconds.
Time to Interactive
The champion
When it comes to the best performer of Time to Interactive, the best in class is the official White House website.
Google’s benchmark for Time to Interactive is 3.8 seconds.
The White House website has a score of 0.5 seconds. This is pretty darn fast and it does that because it avoids loading heavy resources like videos.
The slowest
When it comes to the worst performer of Time to Interactive, the worst student is the Bleacher Report. The website contains pages with a score of more than 20 entire seconds.
Like with most news sites, the website has to load dynamic elements like Tweets and external links.
First Contentful Paint
The champion
When it comes to the best in class for First Contentful Paint, the best is Fantastic Fiction. The website is for literary fans and follows Wikipedia’s lightweight approach, using mostly text and images only.
Google’s benchmark for First Contentful Paint is 2 seconds.
Fantastic Fiction has a Largest Contentful Paint score of between 0.4 seconds and 0.6 seconds.
The slowest
When it comes to the slowest, I’m afraid that it’s our friends again over at Khan Academy. Because it embeds a lot of video in iframes and it doesn’t optimize the loading times of these assets.
Speed Index
The champion
The GOAT of Speed Index is Distractify, an online media and pop culture publication. The website is well managed, being able to balance the speed with user experience despite also running advertisements.
Google’s benchmark for Speed Index is 4.3 seconds.
Yet Distractify smashes that with a score of just 300 milliseconds, by squeezing the total size of assets requested low as well as reducing scripts that block page rendering.
The slowest
The worst student in class is Lonely Planet, with the travel website performing poorly for speed and loading time.
Its Speed Index score is on average around 10 seconds.
The browser needs to carry out an excessive amount of JavaScript before rendering the page, with many of these scripts fetching dynamic assets, dragging out the speed.
Total Byte Weight
The champion
When it comes to the best in class for Total Byte Weight, the title goes to Oberlo. The ecommerce business is powered by Shopify and manages to squeeze the size of its assets to render the homepage.
Google’s benchmark for Total Byte Weight is below 1,600 KiB.
Oberlo has a Total Byte Weight of 740KB. And manages to use its homepage to load only selected media items, rather than everything at once.
The slowest
When it comes to the naughty boy in class, the worst scores went to CBS Sports. The sports website is at the other extreme, with its homepage weighed down by 42MB. This is predominantly because of the excessive amount of videos.
So there you have it: the best in class and the worst in class across a whole range of metrics, including the Core Web Vitals.
PS: ArganoUV is one of the world’s leading Core Web Vitals teams. Contact us to see how we can work together.
