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Term

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)

LCP measures when the largest visible element in the viewport finishes loading. Part of Core Web Vitals — the "good" threshold is ≤ 2.5 s.

LCP — explained in more detail

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is one of the three Core Web Vitals and captures the moment when the largest visible content element inside the initial viewport has finished rendering — typically a hero image, a background with text, or a large headline. The value is measured in seconds from the start of navigation.

Google classifies the values into three buckets: ≤ 2.5 s = good, ≤ 4.0 s = needs improvement, > 4.0 s = poor. The score that counts is the 75th percentile across all field-data sessions in the CrUX report — not a single lab-test mean.

Example / In practice

Common LCP bottlenecks: unoptimized hero images, render-blocking webfonts, slow server response times (TTFB), or render-blocking CSS. Levers for improvement: image preload, modern formats (WebP/AVIF), fetchpriority="high" on the LCP element, a CDN, smaller critical CSS.

Distinction from similar terms

LCP does not replace FCP (First Contentful Paint), it complements it: FCP measures the first visible element (often just the header or logo), LCP the largest. For the perception “the page is here,” LCP is the closer signal.

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