Core Web Vitals.

What are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are three metrics Google uses to measure the real-world experience of loading and using a web page: Largest Contentful Paint (loading), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness) and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability). They are measured from real Chrome users, and a page passes when at least 75% of visits meet the 'good' threshold for each metric.

Why it matters

Slow, jumpy pages cost enquiries. A visitor on a phone who taps 'Get a quote' and waits, or whose button moves just as they press it, often gives up. Core Web Vitals also form part of Google's page experience signals, so poor scores can hold back pages that otherwise deserve to rank. If you run paid traffic, every slow landing page means paying for clicks that never turn into leads.

The three metrics

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) How long the main content, usually a hero image or headline, takes to appear. Good is 2.5 seconds or less.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP) How quickly the page responds visibly when someone taps or clicks. Good is 200 milliseconds or less; it replaced First Input Delay in March 2024.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) How much the layout jumps around as the page loads. Good is a score of 0.1 or less.

What to do about it

Open Google Search Console and check the Core Web Vitals report, which groups your URLs into good, needs improvement and poor using real visitor data. Fix templates before single pages: if your service page template fails, one fix improves dozens of pages. Compress and correctly size images, remove scripts you no longer use, and test on a mid-range phone over mobile data, which is how many visitors actually arrive.