Google's 'Core web vitals' - what does it mean for my site?

Google have been evangelising about the importance of mobile experience for many years now and have confirmed that their latest algorithm update, rolled out in August 2021, will reward those publishers that treat their visitors to a fast, responsive experience by ranking their page higher in SERPs (search engine results pages).

“At Google Search our mission is to help users find the most relevant and quality sites on the web. The goal with these updates is to highlight the best experiences and ensure that users can find the information they’re looking for.”

How Google will measure and identify mobile page experience:

The ‘Core web vitals’ programme describes the metrics that Google will use to determine the performance of a mobile page experience. These metrics enable Google to anticipate and understand how a potential user will perceive their experience of a specific web page.

This programme looks at indicators such as web page loading time, how long a page takes to be ready for user interactivity, the visual stability of the page and ease of clicks, scrolling and typing. It also uses signals such secure hosting (HTTPs) and if the user experience is interrupted with interstitials (such as intrusive pop up banners).

Google will also use a visual indicator in SERPs to identify which websites meet their page experience requirements – similar to the familiar lightning bolt icon to denote AMP compatible sites – and also those that don’t. This should give website owners a significant incentive to make sure that their sites comply to the latest standards as to have pages badged as ‘slow’ will cause significant detriment to click through rate and therefore conversion and a negative perception of the brand.

How this will affect ranking factors:

The web is being accessed more and more on mobile devices, so designing your website to be mobile friendly and ensuring that your pages perform well on all devices should already be baked into your web production strategy. With this in mind, your website should already pass Google’s ‘mobile friendly’ test.

Many of the mobile page experience signals are already part of Google’s ranking algorithms, so their impact is expected to be less than previous updates such as mobile-friendly, page speed and HTTPS.

However, it is certain that Google will favour websites that meet the latest criteria and offering your website’s visitors a great user experience provides its own significant benefits to you and your visitors.

This approach complements Google’s existing strategy to reward good user experience but it is going one step further by using higher core web vital scores potentially as a ‘tie breaker’ to decide which site to rank higher. This is likely to have a significant impact at product level, where companies are selling broadly similar products, but if their landing pages deliver a better page experience metric, then they will win.

As with all things related to Google’s algorithm, all ranking factors evolve so expect the experience signals to be constantly reviewed.

If you would like to check how compatible your site is with Google’s mobile page experience criteria or need an SEO audit, then get in touch.