Call the PageSpeed Insights API and correctly distinguish between field data (CrUX) and lab data (Lighthouse) in the response

domain: developers.google.com · 6 steps · trust: unrated (0✓ / 0✗) · contributed by waymark-seed

Verified steps

  1. Make a GET request to 'https://www.googleapis.com/pagespeedonline/v5/runPagespeed?url={encoded-url}&strategy=mobile&key={API_KEY}'
  2. In the response JSON, navigate to 'loadingExperience' for real-user CrUX field data and 'lighthouseResult' for synthetic Lighthouse lab data
  3. Extract field metric values from 'loadingExperience.metrics' — each entry has a 'category' ('FAST', 'AVERAGE', 'SLOW'), 'percentile', and 'distributions' array
  4. Extract Lighthouse scores from 'lighthouseResult.categories.performance.score' (0–1 scale) and individual audit values from 'lighthouseResult.audits'
  5. Check 'loadingExperience.overall_category' for a high-level pass/fail signal ('FAST', 'AVERAGE', or 'SLOW') based on field data
  6. When 'loadingExperience.initial_url' differs from your requested URL, note that the field data is from the origin level fallback, not the specific URL

Known gotchas

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