LCP loading attribute
The loading attribute on the LCP element: eager, lazy, or auto.
At a glance the headline numbers for LCP loading attribute
The loading attribute on the LCP element: eager, lazy, or auto.
17.5% of LCP images are lazy-loaded, the one attribute they should never carry.
LCP loading attribute who uses what, and how fast each group loads
Little daylight between the groups: every variant sits near 48ms median INP. computed
Passing INP per LCP loading attribute which group passes the INP most often
No variant stands out: pass rates sit between 98% and 99%. computed
Why this matters for the Core Web Vitals, and where to start fixing it
loading=lazy on the LCP image is a self-inflicted delay. A lazy image waits for layout to prove it is in the viewport before it downloads. That puts the most important image of the page behind a step it never needed. The browser would have fetched it immediately.
Usually nobody decided this. Themes and plugins lazy-load every image by default, hero included. The fix is removing one attribute, and the audit is one search through the templates.
How does this affect the Core Web Vitals?
The choice barely moves the LCP: 90% pass at best, 87% at worst. This signal does not separate passing sites from failing ones.
The split is bigger on CLS. With Eager, 82% of sites pass it. With Auto, 76% do.
Chrome field data from 189,915 sites, representing millions of real page loads. How we measured.