Does a faster site rank better? We measured 1,246 of them
“Page speed is a ranking factor” is one of the most repeated sentences in this industry, and the version of this article that stood here until recently repeated it. So we tested it.
Every business in the Local Digital Visibility Index is measured on Core Web Vitals and on how much of its sector’s keyword basket it actually ranks for. That gives 1246 businesses with both numbers. If a faster site ranked better, the fast group would rank better than the slow group.
It doesn’t
Section titled “It doesn’t”| Speed score | Businesses | Median search visibility |
|---|---|---|
| 0–39 | 61 | 8 |
| 40–54 | 162 | 13 |
| 55–69 | 605 | 4 |
| 70–84 | 271 | 4 |
| 85–100 | 147 | 0 |
The bands do not order. The fastest group is not the most visible, the slowest is not the least, and the correlation across all 1246 businesses is -0.087 — which is no usable relationship at all.
That is not a claim that speed is worthless. It is a claim that among comparable local businesses, how fast your site is tells you almost nothing about whether anyone finds it.
Why the belief persists
Section titled “Why the belief persists”Two reasons, and both are honest mistakes.
Speed is easy to measure, so it gets measured. A number you can generate in thirty seconds becomes the number people optimise, whether or not it is the number that matters. Everything else in this index took real work to collect.
Fast sites are often well-maintained sites. A business that fixed its Core Web Vitals is usually a business that also has a current Google Business Profile and a site someone tends. That correlation is real, and it gets mistaken for speed itself doing the work. Our data has the same confound, which is exactly why the flat result is interesting: even with that confound helping, no relationship shows up.
What the speed data does say
Section titled “What the speed data does say”Across 1246 businesses the median Core Web Vitals score is 64, and only 146 of 1246 score below 50. 41 score a perfect 100.
That is the real finding about speed in local business websites: it is largely a solved problem. Modern hosting, modern themes and modern image handling fixed it for most firms without anyone thinking about it. Which makes it a strange thing to still be selling as the priority.
Where the work actually is
Section titled “Where the work actually is”The same businesses, on the two pillars that decide whether anyone finds them:
- Median search visibility: — see the pillar breakdown — it sits near the floor
- Median AI search presence: zero. Most local firms are not named when an assistant is asked to recommend one
Speed matters to the people already on your site. It is not what decides whether they arrive. If your Core Web Vitals are green and your enquiries are flat, the speed work is done and the problem is somewhere else — most likely how much of your sector you rank for at all, or whether answer engines know you exist.
How this was measured
Section titled “How this was measured”Core Web Vitals come from the PageSpeed Insights API, one run per business per quarter, mobile. Search visibility is the share of a twelve-keyword sector basket the business ranks for in the top 100, weighted by average position. Both are published per business in the open datasets, and the methodology states the rules.
The correlation quoted is Pearson’s r across every business with both scores. A single quarter of one region is enough to say “the effect is not visible here”; it is not enough to say “no such effect exists anywhere”. Those are different claims and only the first one is being made.
Data: PYC Local Digital Visibility Index, 1246 businesses measured across the South West, recomputed at build time. Analysis by PYC.