November Core update or vitals effects?

[RatIkette]

Hi guys! I'm thinking on something I would love to have your opinion about.

1. October 17: we did an update on our website to fix a web core vitals issue (CLS issue: more than 0.1).
2. October 29: All our pages passed in green.
3. October 30: We started to have 30% more traffic globally, and even 50% more traffic on some pages. It continues today.
4. November 2: The November Core update started to rolling out.

We already did some updates to fix web core vitals issues in the past and never had noticeable traffic improvements. Added to that, I saw so much people working on their web core vitals without any traffic improvements. So even If there is a perfect match here, I still have some doubts...

What do you think?
- Did the recent core update could be the only reason on the improvements? (But it just started to rolling out 3 days later ?!)
- Could our web core vitals issue fix be the small thing we needed to have this traffic improvements from the Core Update? (But again, the Core Updated started 3 days later ?!)
- Is this traffic improvements only due to the CLS issue fix?

Thanks in advance guys ❤️

[adman]

I can tell you from personal experience that CLS is not the cause of traffic improvement.
I used to have CLS down to 85-90% and still get exponentially more traffic.
Reason for bad CLS was non responsive site but ironically 90% of my traffic was mobile! :)
So, believe me, logic is not Google's logic!

[RatIkette]

Thank you very much @adman for your answer! it is very helpful.

I would love to have more than 1 opinion about this situation. Is somebody else had any traffic improvements (or not?!) with any CLS/web core vital improvements? Maybe close to this Core Update?!

Thanks in advance <3

[superclown2]

A core update can have unpredictable effects whilst it's running and until it's over there is really no point in trying to analyse any changes you have made.

CLS is usually a fairly minor ranking factor. Unless it was really bad before you made the changes I wouldn't expect it to have much effect. Your loading speed (which poor CLS can contribute towards) can have quite an effect though, a slow loader can mean visitors leaving your site prematurely and that definitely is a ranking signal. A fast loading site with the minimum of code clutter is the ideal to work towards so using a CMS can be an issue. Hand coding a site with the minimum use of external files such as standard (over-bloated) JS and CSS can make a huge difference to loading speed, which leads to visitor retention and then better marks from Google.

However; on the balance of probabilities Google's constant updates are more likely to be the cause of ranking changes and these may well be temporary until the time between one update ending and another beginning (a time which seems to be getting shorter and shorter).

[adman]

However; on the balance of probabilities Google's constant updates are more likely to be the cause of ranking changes and these may well be temporary until the time between one update ending and another beginning (a time which seems to be getting shorter and shorter).

Which essentially means temporary rankings could be actually permanent.

[RedBar]

2. October 29: All our pages passed in green.

I'll bite, what does that mean?

[RatIkette]

Thank you very much @superclown2 for your answer, appreciate every opinion about this.

@RedBar: That mean the pages was in orange on google search console because of the CLS issue, they passed in green (issue fixed) October 29th