Google has revealed that beginning June 2021, they will be evaluating “Page Experience” as an additional element for their search ranking. With such a criterion in its nascent stages, even Google’s tools, such as Page Speed Insights and Google’s Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console, appear to provide ambiguous data.

With that, this article will tackle how to use and how you can optimize Google’s Core Web Vitals Report.

What Are Google’s Core Web Vitals?

Google’s Core Web Vitals are a collection of three measures used to determine whether a website’s “core” experience is quick or slow for users and provides a satisfactory experience.

Different values of a Core Web Vital measure across two pages could result in other page experience rankings outside of the good range. Thus, to receive the full benefit of any ranking gain, websites must be inside the green measurements for all three of Google’s Core Web Vitals.

The following are the metrics for Google’s Core Web Vitals:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) assesses how quickly you get the largest item — which is most likely the piece of content material the user is interested in — drawn on the page. This item could be a banner image, a part of a text, or anything for that matter.

LCP was assessed previously using a comparable metric: First Contentful Paint (FCP). However, LCP gets viewed as a better indicator for determining when the material the visitor is most likely to desire to see gets drawn.

LCP is intended to quantify loading performance and serves as a suitable proxy for all of the previous performance measures we used to employ in the performance community but from the user’s perspective.

First Input Delay (FID)

The First Input Delay (FID) metric tracks how long it takes for a user to engage with a website and for the browser to process that interaction. Essentially, FID is used to determine how interactive a page is. Note that it is still an unpleasant experience for the user if all of the material is loaded, but the page is unresponsive.

Additionally, you cannot simulate this measure since it is dependent on when a user clicks or interacts with a website, measuring how long it takes for that interaction to get completed.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is designed to test the visual stability of the page, specifically, how much it jumps around when new information slots into place.

Users find this “jump” to be highly unpleasant and irritating. Thus websites must do something to minimize such instances. Aside from jumps, users also find it annoying when they are about to press a button, but the page moves, and they accidentally press another one. Thus, CLS attempts to account for these layout changes.

Viewing Google’s Core Web Vitals For Your Site

Entering a URL into Page Speed Insights is the quickest way to see Google’s Core Web Vitals report for each specific URL and the entire origin. Moreover, you may get access to Google Search Console to discover how Google perceives your entire site’s Core Web Vitals.

SEO teams have already been using Google Search Console for the longest time. Still, given the information that site developers will require to meet Google’s Core Web Vitals, development teams should, if they have not previously, obtain access to this tool as well.

The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console gives you a summary of how your site is meeting the Core Web Vitals over the last 90 days. To gain access, website developers will need a Google account and then prove their site ownership using several methods.

Conclusion

Through Google’s Core Web Vitals, the newest criterion for search ranking — Page Experience — will be measured.

To be deemed entirely passing Google’s Core Web Vitals, all of your web pages should be green, with no ambers or reds. While amber indicates that you are getting near to passing, only greens count for the full benefits of passing Google’s Core Web Vitals.

It is entirely up to you whether you want all of your pages or just the important ones to pass. However, there are often identical issues on several web pages, and correcting those for your website will help reduce the number of URLs that do not pass so you can make those judgments.

Google’s Core Web Vitals ranking will initially only apply to mobile, but it is only a question of time before it expands to desktop. Hence, website creators should not overlook desktops while assessing and improving their web pages now.