Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest Contentful Paint measures how long it takes for the biggest piece of content to render, a Core Web Vital that captures how quickly a page feels loaded.
Also known as: LCP
LCP measures when the main content appears. As a Core Web Vitals metric, it clocks the moment the largest visible element — usually a hero image or headline block — finishes rendering, which is a good proxy for when the page feels usefully loaded to a visitor.
Where First Contentful Paint marks the first pixel of content, LCP marks the main content, so it's a stricter speed signal. For the access pillar, a fast LCP means your primary content is available quickly to users and well-placed for crawling. The usual improvements — serving content as HTML rather than assembling it in the browser, optimizing images, and reducing render-blocking work — also tend to make your content more reliably readable by AI.
Example. If a page's headline and lead image render in under a couple of seconds, it has a good LCP; if the main content only appears after a long JavaScript load, LCP suffers — and so does the page's overall readiness for both users and crawlers.
Relevant pillar
Related terms
- Core Web VitalsCore Web Vitals are Google's set of user-experience metrics for loading, interactivity, and visual stability, a measurable proxy for the page speed and quality that support AI visibility.
- First Contentful Paint (FCP)First Contentful Paint is a performance metric measuring how long after navigation the browser renders the first piece of page content, used as a proxy for how quickly a page becomes useful.
- Time to First Byte (TTFB)Time to First Byte measures how long after a request the server sends the first byte of the response, an early speed signal that affects both crawl efficiency and how fast a page can load.