The Affects of a CDN on your Websites Performance and Users Experience (and Google)

One of the most common questions we get about our CDN is performance: How much faster will my site be? Is it worth enabling a CDN? Does it really matter for users and Google?

In this post, we compare a simple WordPress site (snowdyssey.com) before and after enabling the CDN using three tools and three key metrics:

These metrics are important for SEO (Core Web Vitals) and—more importantly—for user experience. If users wait seconds to see content, they bounce.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix measures performance and provides optimization hints. Before vs. after:

The site went from a B (85%) to an A (100%). Most notably, LCP improved from 1.6s to ~0.38s—over 4× faster—so users see the hero content in under half a second.

WebPageTest

We tested from three regions—Virginia (US), London (UK), and Singapore—to gauge global performance.

Virginia, USA

London, UK

Singapore

In all regions, content loads significantly faster. Our edge configuration—high-performance disks and in-memory caching—keeps content fresh and close to users, improving both FCP and LCP.

Uptrends CDN Performance Check

Uptrends runs from multiple cities and reports page total time. It’s great for a global snapshot.

Pre-CDN, latencies climb as you move away from the origin (LA): e.g., San Diego ~100 ms, New York ~387 ms, London ~799 ms, Singapore ~963 ms. With a CDN, the picture flips—Tokyo ~11 ms, Singapore ~18 ms, Sydney ~24 ms, Frankfurt ~30 ms—double-digit times around the world.

Performance matters

Yes, Google cares (Core Web Vitals), but more importantly, users do. CDNs materially improve perceived speed and real metrics (FCP/LCP/TTFB) across regions. How is your site performing today?