How to Check Page Speed in Google Analytics

Knowing how fast (or slow) your website loads is no longer optional - it directly affects your search rankings, user experience, and conversion rates. While Google Analytics used to have a straightforward "Site Speed" section, finding this data in Google Analytics 4 requires a slightly different approach. This article will show you exactly how to measure and analyze page speed using Google's current tools and how to use GA4 to prioritize your optimization efforts.

Why Page Speed Matters (More Than Ever)

Before we get into the "how," let's quickly recap the "why." A slow website actively harms your business in three undeniable ways:

• SEO Performance: Google uses page speed as a critical ranking factor. As part of its "Page Experience" signals, a group of metrics called Core Web Vitals (CWV) directly measure the loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of your pages. Faster pages get a ranking boost, while slower ones can be demoted.
• User Experience: Modern web users have very little patience. Studies consistently show that as page load time increases, the bounce rate - the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page - skyrockets. A mobile page that takes more than three seconds to load loses over half of its visitors.
• Conversion Rates: Every extra second your page takes to load costs you money. Whether you’re running an e-commerce store, generating leads, or signing up users, speed has a direct correlation with your bottom line. Major brands have found that a simple 100-millisecond improvement in speed can increase revenue by 1%.

Slow pages don't just feel bad to use, they create a ripple effect that damages traffic, user trust, and ultimately, sales.

Where are the Site Speed Reports in Google Analytics 4?

If you used the older version of Google Analytics (Universal Analytics or UA), you might remember the dedicated Site Speed reports. They were simple and provided metrics like "Average Page Load Time" and "Server Response Time" right out of the box.

In Google Analytics 4, these specific reports no longer exist. GA4 shifts the focus from simple page load metrics to post-load user interactions and engagement. While this is frustrating if you’re looking for a direct replacement, it encourages a more modern and accurate workflow using a combination of Google's tools.

So, instead of looking for one report inside GA4, the best practice is to use tools built specifically for speed analysis - like PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console - and then use GA4 to give that data business context. Let's walk through how to do this effectively.

The Best Way to Check Page Speed: A 3-Step Process

The most reliable way to analyze your site's speed is to use the tools Google provides for this exact purpose. Afterward, you’ll pop back into GA4 to figure out where to focus your improvements for the biggest impact.

Step 1: Get Your Core Web Vitals Report in Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is the single most important source for understanding how Google actually sees your site's performance. It shows you performance data gathered from real Chrome users who visit your site. This is known as "field data," and it's what Google uses for ranking.

Your goal here is to check the Core Web Vitals report.

1. Log into your Google Search Console account.
2. In the left-hand navigation, go down to the Experience section and click on Core Web Vitals.
3. You'll see two reports, one for Mobile and one for Desktop. Each report groups your site's URLs into three buckets: Poor, Needs improvement, and Good.

Click on one of the reports (e.g., "Open Report" for Mobile) to see a detailed breakdown. GSC will tell you exactly which metrics are causing issues (LCP, INP, or CLS) and provide a list of example URLs that are failing. This is your high-level overview directly from the source.

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): How long it takes for a page's main content to load. Aim for under 2.5 seconds.
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint): Measures how long it takes for the page to respond after a user interacts with it (like clicking a button). This has recently replaced FID (First Input Delay). Fast websites feel responsive.
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Measures visual stability. It checks if elements on the page jump around as it loads. A low score here means a smooth, stable loading experience.

Step 2: Dive Deep with PageSpeed Insights

Google Search Console tells you that you have a problem. PageSpeed Insights is the tool that tells you why and how to fix it.

PageSpeed Insights uses both real-user "Field Data" (when available) and "Lab Data" from a controlled test environment. This lets you diagnose specific technical issues that are slowing your page down.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Go to the PageSpeed Insights website.
2. Enter a URL from your site. Start with your homepage or one of the URLs flagged as "Poor" in your GSC report.
3. Click "Analyze."

The report you get back is full of actionable data, but don't get overwhelmed. Focus on three key areas:

• Overall Scores: Right at the top, you'll see scores for Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. Your main concern here is the Performance score.
• Core Web Vitals Assessment: This section shows you if the URL is passing the CWV assessment, along with the specific metrics for LCP, INP, and CLS.
• Opportunities & Diagnostics: This is your 'to-do list'. PageSpeed Insights will provide specific recommendations like "Reduce initial server response time," "Eliminate render-blocking resources," and "Properly size images." Each suggestion even includes an estimate of how many seconds you could save by implementing it.

Step 3: Use Google Analytics 4 to Prioritize Your Efforts

Now that you know how to identify slow pages and what’s causing the problem, the final question is: Which pages should you fix first? You can't fix everything at once. This is where GA4 becomes incredibly useful.

Your goal is to find pages that have the highest business value and are also likely hurting your performance. By fixing your most important pages first, you get the biggest return on your effort.

Here’s what to look for in your GA4 property:

Identify Your Most Important Pages

1. In GA4, navigate to Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens.
2. By default, this report is sorted by Views. This shows your most popular pages. Any of your top 5-10 pages are excellent candidates to run through PageSpeed Insights because improving them benefits the largest number of users.
3. Change the primary Dimension to look for other important pages:

By combining this business-level importance from GA4 with the technical diagnostics from PageSpeed Insights, you can create a prioritized list of pages to optimize for speed.

Key Fixes for Common Page Speed Problems

Once you’ve identified your slowdowns with PageSpeed Insights, you’ll find that a few common issues tend to be the biggest culprits. Here are some of the most impactful fixes you can make:

1. Optimize Your Images

Large, uncompressed images are the number one cause of slow pages. Make sure you’re:

• Compressing images: Use tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to shrink file sizes without losing visual quality.
• Serving next-gen formats: Use modern image files like WebP, which offer much better compression than traditional JPEG or PNG.
• Using lazy loading: Setting images to "lazy load" tells the browser to wait to load images that are below the fold until the user scrolls down to them. This dramatically speeds up the initial page load.

2. Improve Server Response Time

Also known as Time to First Byte (TTFB), this is how long it takes for your server to send back the first piece of information after a request. A slow response time could be caused by poor-quality hosting. Consider:

• Upgrading your hosting plan: Shared hosting is cheap but often slow. Moving to a VPS or dedicated server can make a huge difference.
• Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN stores copies of your site in servers around the world, so visitors connecting from far away get data from a closer server, reducing latency.

3. Minimize and Defer Render-Blocking Resources

Web pages are built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. If the browser has to download and process large CSS or JavaScript files before it can show any content on the screen, your page will feel very slow. Fix this by:

• Minifying your code: Removing all extra spaces, characters, and comments from your code files to make them smaller.
• Eliminating render-blocking JavaScript and CSS: Configure critical CSS to load first, and defer any JavaScript that isn't needed right away until after the main page content has loaded.

Final Thoughts

Checking page speed is no longer about finding a single metric inside Google Analytics. The modern workflow involves using Google Search Console to get a high-level performance overview from real users and PageSpeed Insights to diagnose the technical issues holding you back. You can then use GA4's rich engagement data to prioritize fixes that will have the greatest impact on your traffic and business goals.

One of the biggest challenges in this whole process is connecting the dots between your different platforms - ad spend from Google Ads, traffic data in GA4, and sales data in Shopify or a CRM. To truly understand performance, you need a holistic view. With tools like Graphed, we solve this by letting you connect all your data sources in one place. You can then use plain English to ask questions like, "Show me my top 10 landing pages from our Facebook campaign, along with their views from GA4 and conversions from HubSpot." We can instantly create a dashboard that surfaces high-traffic, low-converting pages that might be suffering from speed issues, eliminating hours of manual cross-referencing and report building.