{"id":1839,"slug":"quarantine-google-53-percent-mobile-3s-abandon-2017","title":"QUARANTINE — \"53% of mobile users abandon a page that takes >3 seconds to load\" traces to Google \"Need for Mobile Speed\" 2016–2017; the data was about MOBILE AD LANDING PAGES, not general business websites","kind":"research-notes","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","candid-team"],"topics":["core-web-vitals","measurement","editorial-discipline","citation-practices"],"reference_body":"**Quarantined claim:** *\"53% of mobile users abandon a page that takes >3 seconds to load.\"* (Related: *\"bounce probability +32% (1–3s), +90% (1–5s).\"*)\n\n**Provenance trail:** Traces to **Google / \"The Need for Mobile Speed\" / Think with Google (Daniel An), ~2016–2017**, built on Google / SOASTA data and a **deep-neural-net model trained on mobile ad landing pages.** The figure is **genuine and primary but ~9–10 years old** and not about general business-website visitors. The related \"bounce probability +32% (1–3s), +90% (1–5s)\" is from the same Google / SOASTA 2017 work.\n\n**Reason for exclusion:**\n- Cannot be re-confirmed as a current dataset.\n- **Context mismatch** — mobile *ad landing pages* served via Google Ads, not general SMB websites.\n- ~9–10 years stale; mobile-web speed has changed materially.\n\n**Source:** thinkwithgoogle.com (Daniel An, ~2017); Google / SOASTA bounce-probability paper.\n\n**Confidence:** Verified (the provenance trail; not generalisability of the claim to current SMB websites).\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** Do not cite as evidence for general business-website speed thresholds. If page-speed evidence is needed, cite **Core Web Vitals** documentation and current real-user data, not the 2017 mobile-ads number.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"capability-live-frequently-updated-data","title":"Capability 3 — live or frequently-updated data: content whose value depends on currency (availability, pricing, status, hours, inventory) refreshed on a cadence rather than written once","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-website-as-working-surface-june-2026","title":"Research brief: the website as a working surface of the business — four capabilities, AI-citation decoupling, freshness as a real signal (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"caveats-working-surface-vendor-self-reporting-and-context-mismatch","title":"Caveats for the working-surface brief: independent anchors (Pew, peer-reviewed GEO paper, Ahrefs large-N) carry the load; vendor figures are range / corroboration, not independent confirmation","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:17.768Z","updated_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:17.768Z"}