Google CrUX
The Google Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is a web database that stores User Experiences with websites based on data collected from the Google Browser.
What does CRUX Measure?
CRUX measures the following UX Data points:
- Core Web Vitals
- Mobile Friendliness
- HTTPS
- Intrusive Interstitials Test
CRUX Controversies
Several faux SEO influencers have gone on to theorize that Chrome also tests for Bounce Rate and “User Engagement” metrics but this has been thoroughly and comprehensively debugged by various Google Search quality and engineering teams.
Chrome User Experience
The Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) in short, is a treasure trove of information on how real people experience websites using Google Chrome and it is a giant dataset compiled from anonymized browsing data:
CrUX’s Real User Data
Unlike simulated tests, CrUX data comes from actual Chrome users around the world. This provides a more realistic picture of website performance in a real world situation.
Core Web Vitals
CrUX tries to focus on metrics that directly impact user experience, including the all-important Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS). These metrics are used by Google Search to influence search rankings.
Publicly Available Data
The data is free to access through various tools offered by Google and third-party developers.
Mobile Friendly Criticism
Mobile represents both an opportunity and a problem for Google. It’s lost a lot of ground, initially, to apps like Snapchat and Instagram and now to TitTok – mainly because everyone at Google (except the Search Team) are asleep at the wheel. The other problem for Google is that its biggest Advertisers – namely B2B Ad Managers – don’t care about mobile because 1) their audience isn’t there and 2) because it doesn’t convert. And so, Google has adopted a reckless and annoying campaign to force Ad managers and Web Architects to build mobile solutions instead of building an audience there separately themselves. This campaign just won’t work and this will impact Google’s bottom line.
Intrusive Interstitials and Paywalls
Google has had a love/hate relationship with News publishers forever. Recently, the EU has begun forcing Google – which takes a pretend non-publisher stance – to share revenue with publishers. News Publishers, on the other hand, have been following the New York Times (which has a subscriber base of over 1m, the largest globally, which demonstrates that people don’t believe in paying for digital news reporting) and putting up paywalls. Paywalls fall foul of both intrusive interstitials and cloaking – because the sites show a different version to Google and the user. But because they don’t show the paywall to Google, it can’t detect it. Technically, sites that do this should be penalized or demoted based on both but Google, which doesn’t want to solve the problems it creates, has decided to ignore this.
