The 2026 Website & Core Web Vitals Report

Speed used to be a technical afterthought. In 2026 it is a revenue line item. Google judges real-world page experience through Core Web Vitals, roughly half the mobile web still fails that test, and every major study from Google, Deloitte, Portent and HTTP Archive points the same direction: slower pages convert fewer visitors, bounce more of them, and cost more to advertise against.

This report synthesises the year’s most credible, publicly verifiable performance research into one plain-English benchmark for small and service businesses. Every figure is attributed to a named study so you can check it, cite it, or hand it to a developer as a target. None of these cross-industry averages are targets in themselves, they are the baseline most competitors are failing to clear.

The Headline Numbers

Eight numbers frame this report. Read them as a map, not a verdict. Each one shifts with your industry, your channels and your market.

How We Built This Report

This synthesis draws on field data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) as published in the HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2025 (July 2025 CrUX snapshot) and the more recent May 2026 CrUX release, which together measure real Chrome user sessions across tens of millions of origins. These are supplemented with controlled and observational conversion research: Portent’s analysis of over 100 million pageviews across 20 B2B and B2C sites (“Site Speed Is (Still) Impacting Your Conversion Rate,” 2022), the Google-commissioned, Deloitte Digital-authored “Milliseconds Make Millions” study of 37 brands and 30 million-plus mobile sessions (2020), and Google’s SOASTA-powered mobile bounce-rate research.

Platform and industry breakdowns use PageSpeed Matters’ analysis of CrUX field data (May 2026, up to 13.75 million origins) and HTTP Archive’s Core Web Vitals Technology Report (November 2025 snapshot). Mobile traffic share figures come from StatCounter via Statista. Where studies conflict or use different methodologies (lab data versus field data, different CrUX release months), the report names the source and date for each number rather than blending them into a single unsourced figure.

The State of Core Web Vitals in 2026

The headline number has not moved as much as it should have. 48% of mobile origins and 56% of desktop origins passed all three Core Web Vitals in 2025, per the HTTP Archive Web Almanac using CrUX field data from July 2025. That means more than half the mobile web still fails the exact assessment Google uses to define a good page experience.

Mobile Core Web Vitals pass rate by metric (2025 Web Almanac)

Largest Contentful Paint remains the chokepoint. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is the metric most sites fail on mobile: only 62% of mobile origins scored "good" in 2025. By comparison, 77% pass INP and 81% pass CLS, but only 62% pass LCP, which is what drags the overall pass rate down. The most recent 2026 data shows gradual progress: as of the May 2026 CrUX release published on 9 June 2026, only 55.9% of tracked origins pass all three Core Web Vitals, part of a quiet but meaningful Core Web Vitals update, with roughly 68.6% of origins passing LCP, 81.3% passing CLS, and 86.6% passing INP individually.

Part of the problem is that pages keep getting heavier. HTTP Archive's Web Almanac for 2025 puts the median page at 2.56 MB on mobile and 2.86 MB on desktop, measured across millions of sites. A decade ago that figure was a fraction of the size: median home page weight grew from 1,208 KB on desktop and 505 KB on mobile in October 2014, to 2,862 KB on desktop and 2,559 KB on mobile in July 2025. Heavier pages mean more bytes to download before the Largest Contentful Paint can fire, which is exactly the metric most sites are failing.

The Conversion Cost of a Slow Page

The clearest conversion-rate evidence comes from Portent, which examined over 100 million pageviews across 20 B2B and B2C sites. Portent looked at just over 100 million page views across 20 B2B and B2C sites for conversion data, six of which were B2C e-commerce and the other 14 B2B lead generation. The results show a steep, almost linear decline: the highest conversion rates occurred between 1 and 2 seconds, with an average of 3.05% e-commerce conversion rate at 1 second, down to a 0.67% e-commerce conversion rate at a 4-second load time. That is roughly a 4.5x gap between a 1-second and a 4-second page.

Ecommerce conversion rate by page load time (Portent)

B2B lead-generation sites show an even wider spread. For B2B websites there is a 3x gain in conversion rate if a web page loads in 1 second compared to 5 seconds, and a 5x gain compared to 10 seconds. Separately, lead generation pages that load in 1 second convert almost 40% of visitors, according to Portent's 2022 study. For a business running paid lead-gen campaigns, that is the difference between a form fill rate in the high thirties and one in the high teens for the exact same offer and traffic.

The Google-commissioned, Deloitte-authored "Milliseconds Make Millions" study adds the revenue side of the equation. Across 37 brands and 30 million-plus mobile sessions, a 0.1-second improvement in mobile site speed was associated with 8.4% higher retail conversions and 9.2% higher average order value, with travel-site conversions running 10.1% higher. Even lead-generation pages benefited: lead generation information pages saw bounce rate improve by 8.3% from the same tenth-of-a-second gain. These are correlational, cross-brand findings, not a guarantee for any single site, but the direction is consistent across every study in this space.

Bounce, Abandonment and the Three-Second Reality

Conversion rate is only half the behavioural story; the other half is how many visitors never stick around to convert at all. Google's mobile bounce research, built with SOASTA, found as page load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds, the probability of a bounce increases by 32%. The curve gets steeper from there: as page load time goes from 1 to 5 seconds, the probability of a bounce increases by 90%, as page load time goes from 1 to 6 seconds, the probability of a bounce increases by 106%, and as the page load time increases from 1 to 10 seconds, the probability of bounce rate increases up to 123%.

Increase in mobile bounce probability vs a 1-second load

Three seconds is the practical cliff edge. If a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 53% of mobile visitors will abandon the site. For a business paying for clicks, that means over half of a campaign's traffic can disappear before the content even renders, regardless of how good the offer or ad copy is.

This matters more every year because mobile carries most of the load. In the second quarter of 2026, mobile devices (excluding tablets) accounted for 51.48 percent of global website traffic according to StatCounter data, though trackers that measure differently put the figure higher: mobile devices account for approximately 64% of global web traffic in 2026 on some counts. Either reading points the same way: treat mobile performance as the primary experience to optimise, not the secondary one, and treat any single mobile-share figure as an average rather than a target for your own traffic mix.

How Speed Shapes SEO Rankings and Google Ads Costs

Site speed is not just a user-experience issue, it touches two channels most service businesses already invest in: organic search and paid search. On the organic side, the correlation is modest but real. Pages ranking at position 1 in Google Search are 10% more likely to pass Core Web Vitals scores than URLs at position 9, based on CrUX-based analysis. Speed alone will not out-rank a page with weaker content or links, but at the margins it tips close contests.

Paid search is where the cost of a slow page becomes a line item you can actually see on an invoice. Google evaluates landing page experience based on content relevance to the keyword, page speed and Core Web Vitals performance, mobile responsiveness, and transparent information and navigation clarity, and that landing page experience sits alongside expected click-through rate and ad relevance as one of the three components of Quality Score. A low score does not just hurt rankings, it raises what you pay for every click.

The gap is not trivial. A brand spending $20,000 a month on Google search ads with an average Quality Score of 4 could be paying 25 to 50% more per click than a competitor with the same keywords and a Quality Score of 7. Since Quality Score is partly a function of landing page experience, and Google's own research found that as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds, the probability of a mobile visitor bouncing increases by 32%, a slow landing page can quietly inflate a paid search budget for months before anyone traces it back to a page-speed problem rather than a bidding problem.

If you run Google Ads and have not audited landing page load time in the last two quarters, that is the single cheapest fix available to lower blended CPC without touching a single bid.

Platform and Industry Gaps: Who Is Winning in 2026

Not all websites start from the same baseline, and the spread between platforms is wide enough to change a redesign decision. On November 2025 HTTP Archive data, Duda passed Core Web Vitals at 84.87% while WordPress sat at 46.28%, a 38-point spread driven mostly by defaults: theme weight, image handling, and render-blocking scripts. That is not a small gap. It is the difference between a platform that passes Google's bar for most sites out of the box and one where most sites need deliberate optimisation work just to catch up to the median.

Core Web Vitals pass rate by online store popularity tier (mobile)

Ecommerce shows a counter-intuitive pattern: bigger, better-funded stores often perform worse, not better. In Google's field data, 36.0% of the biggest online stores (the roughly 140 most-visited) pass Core Web Vitals on mobile, versus 64.7% of the long-tail stores. Step down to the top 100,000 and it rises to 50.8%; the top million reaches 66.3%; and the long tail of ordinary small stores, over 980,000 of them, passes at 64.7%. Heavier third-party tags, personalisation scripts and ad tech on flagship retail sites appear to outweigh their infrastructure budgets.

Industry also matters. Technology sites have the highest pass rate at 65%, an advantage attributed to developer-focused brands having a built-in performance culture. Service businesses, retailers and local brands running on general-purpose CMS platforms sit well below that bar by default, which is exactly why platform and theme choice deserves the same scrutiny as design when a site is rebuilt.

What “Good” Looks Like in 2026

Pulling the data together, here is what a business getting real return looks like this year:

• Treat the cross-industry Core Web Vitals pass rate (48% mobile, 56% desktop) as the floor your competitors are failing to clear, not an acceptable target.
• Fix LCP first: it is the single weakest metric industry-wide at roughly 62% mobile pass rate and the most common reason sites fail the overall assessment.
• Every second between 1 and 4 seconds costs measurable conversion rate; Portent's data shows ecommerce conversion falling from 3.05% to 0.67% across that range.
• Mobile speed work is revenue work: a 0.1-second mobile improvement correlated with an 8.4% retail conversion lift and 9.2% higher average order value in the Deloitte/Google study.
• Audit your CMS and theme before blaming content: platform choice alone can be worth a 38-point swing in Core Web Vitals pass rate.
• If you run Google Ads, a slow landing page is a hidden CPC tax via the landing page experience component of Quality Score, not just a UX issue.

Sources

All figures are drawn from the most recent published data available at the time of writing. Benchmarks are aggregates and vary by industry, market and method.

• HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2025 / Chrome UX Report (CrUX): Core Web Vitals pass rates, LCP/INP/CLS breakdowns and median page weight figures (July 2025 CrUX field data)..
• Portent, "Site Speed Is (Still) Impacting Your Conversion Rate": 100M+ pageview study across 20 B2B/B2C sites linking load time to ecommerce and lead-gen conversion rates..
• Google / Deloitte Digital, "Milliseconds Make Millions": 37-brand, 30M+ session study on mobile site speed's impact on conversion, AOV and funnel progression..
• Digital Applied, Core Web Vitals Benchmarks 2026: May 2026 CrUX global pass rate and CMS platform (Duda vs WordPress) comparison..
• PageSpeed Matters, Ecommerce Core Web Vitals 2026: CrUX May 2026 analysis of Core Web Vitals pass rates by online store popularity tier..
• StatCounter via Statista, mobile web traffic share: Quarterly global mobile share of website traffic through Q2 2026..

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Frequently Asked Questions

What percentage of websites pass Core Web Vitals in 2026?

Using 2025 Web Almanac data (July 2025 CrUX), 48% of mobile origins and 56% of desktop origins passed all three Core Web Vitals. The more recent May 2026 CrUX release put the global all-origin pass rate at 55.9%, with individual metric pass rates of about 68.6% for LCP, 81.3% for CLS and 86.6% for INP. Most of the web, in other words, is still failing at least one metric.

How much does page speed actually affect conversion rates?

Portent's analysis of over 100 million pageviews found ecommerce conversion rates falling from 3.05% at a 1-second load time to 0.67% at 4 seconds, roughly a 4.5x gap. Separately, Google and Deloitte's "Milliseconds Make Millions" study found a 0.1-second mobile speed improvement correlated with an 8.4% retail conversion lift and a 9.2% higher average order value across 37 brands.

Why is LCP the hardest Core Web Vital to pass?

Largest Contentful Paint measures how long the biggest visible element takes to load, and it depends on page weight, server response time and render-blocking resources all at once. Per the 2025 Web Almanac, only about 62% of mobile origins achieve a good LCP score, compared with 77% for INP and 81% for CLS, making LCP the main reason overall pass rates stay near 48% on mobile.

Does page speed affect Google Ads cost per click?

Yes, indirectly but materially. Landing page experience, which includes page speed and Core Web Vitals performance, is one of the three components of Google Ads Quality Score alongside expected click-through rate and ad relevance. Industry analysis suggests a brand with a Quality Score of 4 can pay 25 to 50% more per click than a competitor with a Quality Score of 7 on the same keywords, and Google's own research shows mobile bounce probability rises 32% as load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds, a signal that feeds directly into that score.

Should a small business prioritise mobile or desktop speed first?

Mobile first. Desktop pass rates (56%) already run ahead of mobile (48%) on Core Web Vitals, and mobile devices account for roughly half to nearly two-thirds of global web traffic depending on the tracker used. Google also uses mobile-first indexing, and every major conversion study in this space, from Portent to Deloitte, measured its clearest effects on mobile sessions specifically.