What are Google Core Web Vitals?

I sometimes use affiliate links in content. This doesn’t cost you anything but I may make a commission payment from anything you buy through these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. All opinions remain my own.

Whenever Google announces a big change to things, there’s a general feeling of panic among bloggers and online businesses.  After all, we all want that organic traffic and Google is the biggest source of it.  So whether it was changing their algorithm or the new product review information, Google changes cause nervousness.

With Core Web Vitals, this was a change we knew was coming even if we didn’t completely understand it.  Now as it comes into force, we can start to see what it really means but ultimately, understanding the basics will help you be better prepared.  Or if you do lose traffic, you might be better placed to spot why and if CWV has something to do with it. 

Let’s dive into what are Google Core Web Vitals?

What are Core Web Vitals?

Talk about Core Web Vitals and people get hung up on site speed but the whole process is actually about user experience (UX) and this emphasis isn’t a new one.  User experience is all about people visiting your website having a positive experience that gets them what they are looking for.

There are three main elements we know about that are at the heart of CWV:

• Largest contentful paint (LCP)
• First input delay (FID)
• Cumulative layout shift (CLS)

There are also other metrics known as Other Web Vitals and these include things like:

• The website is mobile friendly and optimised for different devices
• Safe browsing with an SSL certificate and HTTPS
• No ‘intrusive interstitials’ or those pain in the butt popups that you can’t get rid of

Eyes glazing over?  Muttering that these phrases don’t seem like English?  That’s okay, that’s how I felt when I first looked into it.  And while I’m not saying I have it all understood, I know enough to know what to spot.  So that’s what I’ll share with you.

Why do they matter?

Well, they matter because Google has said they do, for starters!  In their official releases about these measures, they said that the CWV will become an official ranking factor:

“We will introduce a new signal that combines Core Web Vitals with our existing signals for page experience to provide a holistic picture of the quality of the user’s experience on a web page”

Google

In fact, most experts think that the core elements will make up the largest part of the score that Google gives your website and how it decides to rank it in search.  Of course, there are around 200 factors that go into this score so a fail or below standard for CWV doesn’t doom you to the third page of search.

Nor does acing these CWV mean you are guaranteed to be placed no.1 in search either!

Testing your website

Before jumping into reading about this, I’d recommend you start with a test or two.  There are lots of tools out there but the one recommended by my website hosts Lyrical Host is called WebPageTest.  This gives you a lot of information about your site and you can actually understand a good amount of it.  Plus there’s a dedicated section for Core Web Vitals do you can easily spot the important information.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

So let’s start on a bit of terminology and see what we can understand about what Google is looking for.  Top of the list is Largest Contenful Paint or LCP.

In simplest terms, LCP is how long the page takes to load from the point of view of a user.  When they click a link, the LCP is how long it takes to see the majority of the content on screen.

Now take note – on screen.  Not the whole of the web page or every part of the website.  Just that first bit, the part often called ‘above the fold’ when talking about sales pages.  This might include your logo, the post title, an intro, a disclosure and the first couple of elements in your sidebar.  Navigation elements too.

When you take a reading, the aim is to be:

If you are over 4 seconds, then there are a few steps you can look at taking:

• Look to see if any third-party scripts can be removed
• Upgrade your hosting to get better load times
• Use lazy loading so images only load when someone scrolls down the page which improves LCP
• Make sure there are no large elements at the top of the page that can slow down loading time
• Minify CSS (or get someone to tell you how to do this as I’ll admit, I don’t have a clue with this one)

First Input Delay (FID)

Next up is First Input Delay which measures how long it takes for someone to interact with your page. Interactions can be anything from choosing an option on the menu to clicking a navigation link, entering their email in a form or opening accordion text on mobile.

Again, there’s some specific metrics to look for:

This measure is a tricky one because it is about the time it takes to do something and that can be a little out of your control. For blog posts, this isn’t going to be a big deal because the main interaction will be scrolling down. Some sites might not even see this on the list of metrics for CWV in Google Search Console.

But if yours does and the score needs work, a couple of suggestions are:

• Minimise or remove JavaScript as this causes problems with interactions
• Remove those non-critical third-party scripts
• Use a browser cache as this helps with everything 

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

The last of the three Core Web Vitals is Cumulative Layout Shift or CLS. This looks at how stable a page is (and no, being on mobile and on a bumpy bus ride won’t affect this one).

When someone loads a page, you want it to be fairly stable and not have the content jump around. You know when you go to a page and the text appears then a moment later an image appears and the text is knocked off the screen? That’s what CLS tries to avoid.

Third time, here’s those metrics to aim for:

Again, if you want to work on improving your score, a few areas to look at include:

• Set a size attribute dimensions for images, videos and such so the browser knows how much space they will take up and doesn’t need to move as they appear
• Make sure ads have a reserved space so they don’t just appear and move everything
• Put UI elements below the fold so they don’t cause the content to shift

Why you shouldn’t get stressed about it

Lyrical Host also recently did a residency in their Facebook group about the whole topic and went into far more detail than I completely understand! But there was also a firm point – don’t stress about it. 

Yes, Core Web Vitals is important and we want to do what Google sees as a good because it increases the chances of organic traffic. But some of Google’s own pages on these things don’t always comply with their own CWV metrics!

So work on things, maybe hire an expert to do a little work if you are clear on what they will do and how this will improve things. But don’t lay awake at night worrying about it all and don’t think your site will suddenly die because of it. Remember, over 200 metrics in ranking scores.