Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are Google's three measures of page experience: Largest Contentful Paint (loading), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness) and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability). They are a confirmed, if small, ranking factor.

Their real weight is commonly overstated. Vitals rarely move a page from position 20 to position 3 — content and links do that. What they do is act as a tiebreaker between comparable pages, and independently affect conversion, because people abandon slow pages regardless of ranking.

The scores are measured on real visits, not in a lab, which is why a site that scores well in a testing tool can still fail. Field data reflects real devices and real networks.

Why it matters

Worth fixing for conversion first and ranking second. If someone sells you an SEO retainer whose main deliverable is a performance score, ask what it's expected to do for traffic.

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Related terms

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)LCP measures how long until the largest visible element — usually a hero image or headline — has rendered. Google considers 2.5 seconds or less good, …Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)CLS measures how much page content moves around unexpectedly while loading — the effect of tapping a button just as an advert loads above it and pushe…Time to First Byte (TTFB)TTFB measures how long from requesting a page until the first byte of response arrives. It captures server processing, database queries and network di…

More in Web & Performance

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)Time to First Byte (TTFB)SSR, SSG and ISRCDN (Content Delivery Network)Headless CMSProgressive EnhancementWeb ApplicationTechnical Debt

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