# Core Web Vitals: See Your Real-User Speed — and Your Competitors'

Track Core Web Vitals from the Chrome UX Report in AI Data Stream: six months of real-user speed trends for your site and up to five competitors. Free on every plan, no setup required.

Your site feels fast on your machine. Every speed test you run says it's fine. But Google doesn't rank your site on how it feels to you or how it performs in a lab — it ranks it on what real Chrome users actually experienced. And until now, that data lived in a corner of Google's ecosystem most people never look at.

**Core Web Vitals is now a connected data source in AI Data Stream — on every plan, including Free.** And because the underlying data is public, it comes with something none of your other analytics can offer: your competitors' numbers, right next to yours.

## What This Data Actually Is

The Chrome UX Report (CrUX) is Google's public record of how real Chrome users experience websites. It's field data, not a lab test: every data point summarizes what actual visitors measured on their actual devices and connections over a trailing 28-day window, updated weekly. It's also the exact dataset Google Search uses when page experience factors into ranking.

We track the four numbers that matter:

- **LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)** — how long until the main content is visible. Good is 2.5 seconds or less.
- **INP (Interaction to Next Paint)** — how quickly the page responds when users tap and click. Good is under 200ms.
- **CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)** — how much the page jumps around while loading. Good is under 0.1.
- **TTFB (Time to First Byte)** — how fast your server starts responding. Good is under 800ms.

All values are the 75th percentile — the experience your slower-than-typical visitor gets, which is the bar Google holds you to.

## The Part Nobody Else Shows You: Competitors

You can't see a competitor's Google Analytics. You can't see their Search Console. But CrUX data is public — any site with enough Chrome traffic is in the dataset, whether they like it or not.

So you can put your competitors on the same chart: add up to five sites and compare six months of weekly history — who's improving, who's quietly getting slower, and where you stand on every metric.

If a competitor redesigns their site and their LCP jumps, you'll see it. If your agency swears the site is fast but you're the highest line on the chart, now you know.

## Ask Your AI About It

The connection adds a data tool your AI can use in chat — for your site or **any** public site:

```
How have our Core Web Vitals trended over the last 6 months?

Compare our vitals against our competitors on mobile.

Our LCP got worse in July — when exactly did it start?

Is competitor X faster than us on phones or just on desktop?

We're all in the "good" range — which metric is closest to slipping?
```

It pairs naturally with your other connections: CrUX says *when* the site got slower, GitHub says *what shipped that week*, and GA4 says *what it cost you in conversions*.

## How This Differs From PageSpeed Insights

If you already use our PageSpeed Insights connection, the two are complementary, not redundant:

- **PageSpeed Insights** runs an on-demand lab test of a single page, right now — ideal for diagnosing *why* something is slow, with concrete optimization suggestions.
- **Core Web Vitals (CrUX)** is what real users actually experienced, across your whole site, week by week for six months — ideal for trends, monitoring, and competitor benchmarking.

In short: CrUX tells you *that* and *when*; PageSpeed tells you *why*.

## The Fine Print

One honest caveat: CrUX only includes sites with enough Chrome traffic. Very small sites — yours or a competitor's — may show "no data," and that's Google's threshold, not ours. Data is also per-origin (your whole site as one number), not per-page.

The widget defaults to **phone** data because that's what Google Search evaluates — a desktop toggle is one click away, and the numbers often tell different stories.

## Zero Setup, Every Plan

This is the easiest connection we've ever shipped: there's no account to link, no API key to create, and nothing to configure. Head to your property's **Connections** page, add **Core Web Vitals (CrUX)**, confirm your website address, and optionally add competitors. That's it.

And because the data is public and costs nothing to serve, it's available on **every plan — including Free**.

## Get Started

Add Core Web Vitals from your property's **Connections** page. If you have questions, check the [full documentation](/docs/connecting-data-sources/) or [contact us](/contact/).