Google "Core Web Vitals" replace 'Speed Report' in GSC

[Robert Charlton]

On May 5, 2020, Google announced on several of its various user channels a set of user experience metrics, which it called "Web Vitals"...

- - In 'Chromium Blog'...
Introducing Web Vitals: essential metrics for a healthy site
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
[blog.chromium.org...]

My emphasis added...

Today we are introducing a new program, Web Vitals, an initiative by Google to provide unified guidance for quality signals that, we believe, are essential to delivering a great user experience on the web.

- - In 'Google Developers'...
Web Vitals
Essential metrics for a healthy site
https://web.dev/vitals/ [web.dev]


Both of the above articles focused on what Google called "Core Web Vitals", and emphasized their importance and universality. Again, I've bolded some spots in my quotes...

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are the subset of Web Vitals that apply to all web pages, should be measured by all site owners, and will be surfaced across all Google tools. Each of the Core Web Vitals represents a distinct facet of the user experience, is measurable in the field, and reflects the real-world experience of a critical user-centric outcome.

The metrics that make up Core Web Vitals will evolve over time. The current set for 2020 focuses on three aspects of the user experience — loading, interactivity, and visual stability — and includes the following metrics (and their respective thresholds):

Today, I've seen numerous announcements that these "Core Web Vitals" have gone live or appear to be rolling out in the GSC. Here's Google's summary of the three Core Web Vitals...

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): measures loading performance. To provide a good user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading.

First Input Delay (FID): measures interactivity. To provide a good user experience, pages should have a FID of less than 100 milliseconds.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): measures visual stability. To provide a good user experience, pages should maintain a CLS of less than 0.1.

Many more details, graphics, and charts on the Google Developers page, as well as on the two major blogs that have been reporting these...

[seroundtable.com...]
[searchenginejournal.com...]

Additionally, WebmasterWorld member Junior Member Steve29 posted the following, apparently coming upon it as it was rolling out, and I will add his post following this one, with several details tweeked for accuracy or completeness.

I'm already seeing some members mentioning sites dropping in the serps, and these perhaps could be explained by the above.

As a personal note, I should add that the most annoying thing I've found about sites loading is the jumping around as you try to read them. I've complained about this for a great many years. I'm hoping this Google initiative causes site owners and advertisers to get it together and fix the problem, as it's perhaps the biggest PITA I encounter in normal web surfing... either that or disappear from the serps.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

Something not to forget, is that, the transmission of a page, and its content is one thing, but not the whole thing.

Lot of webmasters, only rely on speed tests, which are counting the time to first byte, and the time to download the page.

However, today , more than yesterday, you must not forget the time it takes for the browser to build the page, and render it.

My comment about CMS, becoming too complex, also apply to the HTML code they are producing. Some are producing insanely and unnecessarily complex HTML code, with tons of nodes and DOM objects which are consuming time to render by the browsers. I've been analyzing sites created with Wordpress, and often, the time to "render" the page, is longer than the time to transmit it over the Internet !

So, yes, we are speaking about hundreds of Milli seconds, but when you add up all events, this can be several seconds, on a mobile device, or/and low internet connection.

Now, no one forces anyone to optimize its sites, even when it's accountable by Google for its ranking, this is/will still be one, among other factors. If your site is ultra fast, you will not outrank another site that Google "thinks" is "better" . So this is just "recommendation", "if" you want to try to improve the user experience, but you do what you want.

Personally, the indicator which has to be watched out the most is the Cumulative Layout Shift. Not because it might be taken in consideration, somehow, by Google, but because it effectively impact the user experience, in real world situation.

[widgetized]

Am I the only one noticing high volatility of Core web vitals in GSC? It really doesn't make any sense, my website had literally no changes, no updates, no new content in the last couple of months, but I see Core web vitals constantly changing, Good URLs and Poor URLs coming and going... I really hope this won't be a ranking factor because I feel it's tremendously inaccurate now.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

On my side, I see no volatility, this is extremely stable.

It's possible that your pages are at very limit of the threshold between "good" and "poor" , and on same day, a little extra load on the server hosting your sites, might makes these pages fall in the "poor" section. This is just a guess.

[JesterMagic]

@JorgeV while your statement is technically true it's not realistic for most. Using your logic and if speed is the only variable we should all switch back to serving straight HTML with no pre or post scripting.

Servers and users devices are fast enough these days that most can use a properly configured CMS and shouldn't have to worry about any real speed hits. Plugins are probably the biggest issue as authors have a wide variety of coding skill which affect the speed and security of plugins Only install the plugins you really need and make sure you take advantage of caching.

[JorgeV]

Hello -again

The problem with CMS is not only about the pre or post processing (I hope that all CMS close the connection before starting post processing stuffs). It's also about the HTML code they are producing, which is insanely complex, for no reason. As well as their javascript frameworks.

[MrOnTheRopes]

CWV for my site says loads of pages are 'bad' and none are good, due to CLS > 0.25

I've read about CLS and think I understand it, but the thing is my site doesn't have any pages that change/move as the articles describe. They're just static pages. I'm really confused.

This is one article - my site has NOTHING at all like this - just text/images that always stay in the same place.
[web.dev...]

[tangor]

The more CMS and "functionality" out there, the more the old school static coding shines ... lightning fast (if no third party stuff).

Then again, the average user needs to be "entertained" when visiting web sites---which they view as "google" (you don't count).

CWV is just one of many g benchmarks introduced over the years. Play or not.

RWD made sense ... CSS made sense ... all the rest not so much. Pick and choose your battles/strategy. In reality, where you are is pretty much determined by your topic/presentation, not your coding or time to load.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

They're just static pages

No matter if a page is a "static" HTML file, or dynamically generated. (after all, both result in an HTML file).

Check if you have Javascript which is injecting / modifying the page . For example, if you serve ads, or insert social network sharing buttons. If so, include them into a div set with the proper dimensions.

Check that all your img tag come with dimensions. Like that, the browser will reserve the space (placeholder) until the image is loaded.

Be sure that CSS is loaded before the content.

If the browser doesn't know the dimensions of an element of the page (image, video, Javascript generated code,...), it will have to push down (or right) the content once this element is finally there.

[JesterMagic]

@MrOnTheRopes - JorgeV is correct. If your page relies on anything else that is not included with the page itself you have the potential for the page to shift around until all the rest of the items the page relies on is loaded. The simplest example is images. If you don't include the dimensions in the image tag then the page may be rendered once without the image and then rendered again when the image is loaded which will take up space and result in content shifting to take the used space into account.

[MrOnTheRopes]

Okay, thank you both :)

[riccarbi]

OK, for a publisher, it might be one of the few good things from Google in the last 10 years, or not; it all depends on their real intentions.
For the time being, I've found Core Vitals rather useful. They gave me some good advice and helped me focus on some performance bottlenecks of my websites.
Following their advice, I've been able to reduce my average LCP from 3.5 to 1.8 seconds (it didn't come easily, though; we had to make some very relevant changes to the server configuration and rewrite a gazillion jQuery scripts in page templates). Yet, implementing all "good suggestions" from Google had no impact at all on my website ranking, organic traffic, and/or on the usefulness and user-friendliness of Google's SERP, in the last ten years. Think about all those things such as responsiveness, https, AMP, focus on the user's experience, content quality, accessibility, and the like.
Now, I've used my time to really improve my websites' speed, and I'm quite happy with this; and though I fear I'll see them dropping further in the SERP over time, with slow and content-irrelevant websites by "big companies" with fat wallets outperforming our small publishers' ones, despite any effort we make to comply with Google's quality guidelines.
Honestly, I don't trust Google anymore.

[JesterMagic]

@riccarbi You hit the nail on the head. While all these Google suggestions are for the most part technically a good idea they mean very little in terms of ranking. Google will always push their own ads and brands first and they have been doing this every year more and more.

This is followed by the big media properties over high quality niche sites even when the content is old, wrong, and outdated. The problem is that the AI is not really artificial intelligence in the classic sense. It doesn't understand the content, it can't determine if a statement is correct or wrong, it can't determine if an article makes sense. It still just uses "signals" and trust factors (backlinks and the size of the company) to determine ranking.

[nomis5]

Be careful of putting any significant effort into responding to the Core Vitals stuff.

First off it just seems to another word for website speed. Second, G has made webmasters go round in circles in the past over almost irrelevant improvements. Just too many times with zilch effect.

I don't buy into the theory that if website A is half a second slower than website B it has much relevance. If you want to buy something and believe website A may be able to supply it cheaper than website B, you will wait that half second. The same goes with informational websites.

Don't become distracted Core Vitals, most of it is a red herring. It will have almost no effect on rankings unless your site goes at the speed of a tortoise.

The real question, for my mind anyway, is why has G pre-announced such an update so far in advance? Unless you believe that G has the good of mankind as its primary aim, what possible advantage is it to them to announce this future update?

[tangor]

Google will always push their own ads and brands first and they have been doing this every year more and more.

Also bear in mind that some of this is related to g's "business" of indexing the web. Anything YOU do to make their scans go quicker SAVES THEM TIME AND MONEY.

Yes, you want to serve your site quickly ELSE LOSE THE USER ... but the difference between 1.5 seconds and 1.9 seconds is pretty small... and even under best practices you can't control ISP SPEEDS or NETWORK LOADING which affect EVERYTHING regardless of how speedy your site actually IS.

If you really want a FAST SITE, don't use any third party stuff. (chuckles ... not going to happen for sites that use ad servicing).

[gatormark]

Frankly, I am making many refinements to help my website speed base on "Core Web Vitals" results. I've been doing this for a couple of weeks and I have seen some improvement in rankings already. It doesn't hurt to do this. Stuff that I coded 7 years ago was not coded in the most efficient manner, so I'm changing it.

[tangor]

Kudos to all who keep their code neat, clean, fresh and up to date. Coding styles change year on year so it is always a good idea to keep tabs on current practices.

However, does CWV offer new guidance, or simply more of the same we all should do all the time? Still no convinced this is anything "new"...

YMMV

[riccarbi]

The real question, for my mind anyway, is why has G pre-announced such an update so far in advance? Unless you believe that G has the good of mankind as its primary aim, what possible advantage is it to them to announce this future update?

Maybe they want to prepare publishers and webmasters to do, in the near future, something they care about?
For example, I've just noticed that the only pages on my websites that have a "good" mobile score in Core Vitals are the AMPified ones...;)

[Robert Charlton]

Just to note, in case it hadn't been mentioned in this thread, this by Barry Schwartz in SER...

Google: It's Unlikely Core Web Vitals Will Become The Primary Ranking Factor
Sep 7, 2020 - by Barry Schwartz
[seroundtable.com...]

Gary Illyes from Google said on Reddit he thinks it is unlikely that core web vitals "would ever become the primary factor for organic traffic." He said you shouldn't ignore it but Google and other search engines rank primarily based on "highest quality and most relevant results for users' queries," not necessarily what is in the core web vitals.

My thought is that Google initially pushed the word "core" too hard, and issued a corrective so people weren't neglecting content at the expense of content shift. I personally have found that content shift is one of the most annoying user experiences that I can encounter once I'm reading a page.

[sunjun]

I have to say that this Dec core update hits many websites which has poor Core Web Vitals.

[JorgeV]

Google: It's Unlikely Core Web Vitals Will Become The Primary Ranking Factor

No hard feeling, and I do not want to sound disrespectful, but it makes no sense to even think that Core Web Vitals could be a "the" primary ranking factor. This would be non sense to rank a page / site, because of its speed, regardless of its content.

It won't even be a significant ranking factor. Core Web Vitals will be taken in consideration if two pages obtain the same ranking score, once all ranking criteria would have been taken in consideration , then yes, Google will certainly rank the faster of the two page above the other one. So this is a Core Web Vitals will have an impact, in very competitive niches, and still only one criteria among hundreds.

Also, for those claiming that sites with low Core Web Vitals are outranking them "now", keep in mind that Google said that Core Web Vitals will only be integrated next spring.

[saladtosser]

My Core Web Vitals are 100% perfect when I remove google analytics and Adsense, when I put them back on all URLs are deemed poor. Seems to me instead of google scaring webmasters to make their sites faster they could improve the whole web by simply improving their own products almost all websites have installed, quick fix for speed of the whole web at their fingertips and they don't bother....Same goes for their AMP scripts, also called out by their own audit tools!

[Swanny007]

I've done pretty much everything I can to speed up my sites aside from removing AdSense... I can't take off AdSense so I feel like things are hopeless. I have very few "good" URLs as a result which is frustrating.

Here's an example: top page on my site Pagespeed scores 51 mobile, 81 desktop

I remove all ad code (Analytics still loading) and now it scores 97 mobile, 100 desktop. So yeah...