What a baseline is
A baseline is your meaningful reference state. Instead of looking at every new scan in isolation, turbometrics compares current results against an earlier state that matters to you as a starting point.
That makes changes more visible:
- regressions after updates
- improvements after optimisations
- striking differences between regions or devices
- unstable load times over several days
Why the comparison matters so much
A single scan only tells you what the page looked like at that exact moment. Only the comparison answers questions such as:
- is LCP really worse today than last week?
- has the new theme increased the number of requests?
- has the home page become more stable since the last deployment?
- was the bad score just an outlier?
That is exactly why comparison and baseline appear so prominently in the report.
What the product compares
Depending on the view, you see comparisons for:
- the overall score
- sub-scores
- TTFB
- FCP
- LCP
- requests
- payload size
Not every difference is automatically important. Small fluctuations are normal. What is interesting are recurring or clearly visible changes.
When to set the baseline deliberately
A baseline is particularly useful:
- right after a relaunch
- after a larger performance optimisation
- when you want to lock in a stable previous version
- before and after a hosting, theme or plugin change
That way you avoid constantly comparing against a random or already degraded state.
Typical practice
For day-to-day work, the following approach has proven itself:
- set a sensible baseline
- measure important pages regularly
- put alerts on the relevant thresholds
- always read new scans in the context of history and against the baseline
This turns turbometrics into a tool for change and stability, not just into a single report.
Screenshot comparison
The comparison report includes a visual before/after slider for screenshots. If both scans have a desktop and/or mobile screenshot, you can wipe between the two directly.
How to use it:
- the Desktop and Mobile tabs switch between the profiles
- drag the slider left or right to blend between before (scan B) and after (scan A)
- the slider helps you spot quickly whether layout, content or visual structure has changed
The screenshot comparison does not replace metrics, but it shows visible changes at a glance.
Limits of the comparison
A baseline is not a laboratory promise. Differences can also come from cache, time of day, region, third-party scripts or back-end load. That is why you should always read comparison values together with:
- the biggest bottlenecks
- problems and recommendations
- the chosen location
- the development over time