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Google's Core Web Vitals
a ranking factor on Google from May

Google has found that users are more likely to use websites that offer a good user experience. For this reason, from May they will be updating their search algorithm with Google's so-called Core Web Vitals, which we describe in more detail in this article.

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Webamp The team
Webamp The team
- Specialist
Last updated: 12. dec. 2022

Google's Core Web Vitals - key web statistics

Google is constantly trying to improve the user experience on their site and to even more reflect the users' search and action patterns on it.

That's why new updates aren't rare on Google - but the implementation of Google's Core Web Vitals in May will mean more upheaval than usual for your business, web shop or organisation's Google ranking.

Google Core Web Vitals contains three things:

  1. Loading experience
  2. Interactivity
  3. Visual stability of page content

These criteria will be included in Google's search algorithm from May. This means that Google will weight users' experience of your website's on-page performance more than before. How long does it take to load your website? And is your website stable when clicked on?

For businesses, this means that you should put more effort into your analysis of engagement parameters - this could be time on page, bounce rate or pages per session. Indeed, these parameters all tell us something about the user's experience on the website.

Implications of the update

For a long time, the focus has been on content when you wanted to rank high on Google - and it remains essential for Google's algorithm. With the implementation of Google Core Web Vitals, however, comes an increased focus on the technical. So it's a more technical than content-based update.

How do you respond to change?
The new update from Google is going to affect your Google ranking, so how do you ensure your position at the top of Google's search hierarchy continues?

You get your engineers to optimise the back-end of the website. Compress images, fix slow views, unused CSS or Javascript, etc. The more user-friendly you can make your site technically, the higher Google will reward you. And you can start right away to get a head start on your competitors.

Google Search Console (GSC)
GSC is a great tool to help you with Google's new update. It even has a tab in the sidebar where you can view "important web statistics" on your various pages.

With GSC, you can get reports on your pages' statistics and get an idea of which ones you can improve and how much these improvements are needed.

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Parameters for Google's Core Web Vitals

To ensure improvement in your Core Web Vitals, there are four parameters you can tweak. These measure the dimensions of Core Web Vitals - the aforementioned in terms of loading experience, interactivity and visual stability of page content.

  • FCP - First Contentful Paint (loading)
    This parameter measures the time it takes for a page to display some form of content on the page after it has started loading.
  • LCP - Largest Contentful Paint (loading)
    This parameter is used by Google to measure the time it takes to load the largest content material on the given page - which will usually also be the most important content on the page. 2.5 seconds or faster is recommended.
  • FID - First Input Delay (interactivity)
    The time it takes for a page to become interactive. Thus, a measure of page response and determining the experience the user feels when trying to interact with it for the first time. An ideal measurement here is less than 100 ms.
  • CLS - Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability)
    The number of times a page's visual layout changes suddenly and unexpectedly. This parameter refers to the number of times the content of a page has changed and caused the user to lose his/her place on the page without warning. An ideal measurement here is less than 0.1.

Manage these parameters and you'll find Google's updates a welcome boost to your online pages.

Possible new brands on your search results

It is a possibility that Google will even introduce tags or labels that mark how good the page experience is for the user on search results in the SERP. In other words, an indicator of how well one's page meets the parameters I mentioned above.

And it will also be a relevant tool for the user, because as an August survey showed, barely 15% of current pages will meet the criteria for Google's Core Web Vitals.

In short, there's nothing for it but to start optimising those all-important web stats so you're guaranteed a top ranking after the new optimisation of Google's search algorithm comes into force shortly.

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