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Why so little “seo optimized” websites actually have a score of 100 on google pagespeed, core web vitals?
Posted by on January 13, 2026 at 5:57 pmAlmost every time I see an SEO "expert" or "agency" claiming to know what they are doing, I am usually going to their website (or their clients) and find scores between 50-80 (sometimes even lower) and never 100 points (in pagespeed categories: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, SEO). Especially in the "performance" category, I often see scores below 50.
For me (webdev for 16 years now, also NOW doing proper SEO, prior only technical SEO), this shows a lack of professionalism, since those are the technical foundations to run successful SEO.
Why is that so, and does it actually matter?
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1 Reply
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The performance is often a score that takes a hit when pushing big websites or high latency servers.
Often webpages today are made by some kind of framework that loads a lot of unnecessary code.
Many Seo experts can’t get around that extra code for optimising.Also. It’s SEO optimized, not built to be perfect SEO
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In short: The algorithm doesnt specifically care.
It affects user experience, which then may affect algorithm placement if users show negative response metrics to the site because of something like slow load speed.
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Pagespeed scores get used wrong very often.
100 score is lab result, not real user result.
SEO impact comes from real users. CWV, TTFB, INP, LCP under load.Many solid sites sit at 60–80 yet rank fine because content, intent match, crawl health, and links carry more weight.
Low scores below 50 still signal weak basics, agreed.
But chasing perfect Lighthouse numbers can waste time and even hurt UX. -
Many websites have so much custom work done in order to make them function properly it is not possible.
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because nobody cares? Just an idea
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Pagespeed only counts when it’s slow, and it can only count against you.
Going the other way, faster won’t mean it will rank higher.
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Google doesn’t care about your PageSpeed score and neither should you.
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Because it doesnt matter.
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For me (webdev for 16 years now, also NOW doing proper SEO, prior only technical SEO), this shows a lack of professionalismBecause you’re a web dev and have bought into PageSpeed as being important – its not. I actually post this on X regularly that We Beevs seem to have found an alterntive universe of SEO rank factors that Google keeps debunking
> since those are the technical foundations to run successful SEO.
No they aren’t – PageRank and Topical Authority it.
We’re reaching supersition-level polarization in SEO: You just said you keep finding these sites – so its clearly not critical.
I love failing mine – I dont from a UX – but I dont pay any attendtion
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Why is that so, and does it actually matter?no
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Faster AI slop = AI Slop
Faster Spam = Spam
Faster scams = Scam
PageSpeed doesnt make the content better
Some reading you might enjoy
[Google’s Mueller Dismisses Core Web Vitals Impact On Rankings](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-mueller-dismisses-core-web-vitals-impact-on-rankings/530715/)
[SEO Mythbusting – Page Speed (Core Web Vitals) is Not A Big Ranking Factor ](https://www.deanlong.io/blog/page-speed-is-not-a-big-ranking-factor)[How to make your website faster: 3 quick tips](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts7rPPIFhVg) –> at 40s in Google states clearly “do not over focus on it”
[PageSpeed/CWV is not a Ranking factor or signal in SEO | Myth Busted](https://primaryposition.com/blog/pagespeed-seo/)
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Faster AI slop = AI Slop
Faster Spam = Spam
Faster scams = Scam
PageSpeed doesnt make the content better
Some reading you might enjoy
[Google’s Mueller Dismisses Core Web Vitals Impact On Rankings](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-mueller-dismisses-core-web-vitals-impact-on-rankings/530715/)
[SEO Mythbusting – Page Speed (Core Web Vitals) is Not A Big Ranking Factor ](https://www.deanlong.io/blog/page-speed-is-not-a-big-ranking-factor)[How to make your website faster: 3 quick tips](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts7rPPIFhVg) –> at 40s in Google states clearly “do not over focus on it”
[PageSpeed/CWV is not a Ranking factor or signal in SEO | Myth Busted](https://primaryposition.com/blog/pagespeed-seo/)
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My website doesn’t have great performance scores but I dominate SEO in my niche. My scores aren’t great mainly because some of my content is interactive stuff that takes a little while to load. But the metrics that matter for SEO are great: 3% bounce rate and average time on site of nearly 2 minutes. That means people are clicking in and finding the content useful.
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what a ragebait
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Why so *few* (not ‘little’, unless you mean they’re really tiny…)
If you find a ‘low’ score, that’s an indicator there are some technical things that can be implemented to improve the site. That might be well worth the effort to improve conversions, but won’t do much to improve ranking (well, I guess if the site is so slow the bot gives up trying to crawl a page, but if that’s the case I reckon there’s bigger problems to sort).
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