HomeSEO

Core Web Vitals: The Next Official Google Ranking Factor

Core Web Vitals: The Next Official Google Ranking Factor
Like Tweet Pin it Share Share Email

Do you know Google is now introducing a new ranking signal? It will now combine Core Web Vitals along with other existing user experience signals. It will further improve the way with which it evaluates the overall experience a page provides.

This new ranking signal is now in its early stage of development. It has not yet been scheduled to launch until next year. To further help the site owners, Google has offered an early look at the work, which is currently taking place.

Things you need to know about this new page experience signal:

This upcoming ranking signal will be known as the page experience signal. This new page experience signal includes the Core Web Vitals, along with the existing page experience metrics. The following page metrics will be included:

  • Safe browsing
  • Mobile-friendliness
  • Intrusive interstitial guidelines
  • HTTPS-security

This page experience further measures the various aspects of how users can perceive the experience to interact with a web page.

Optimizing these factors will make the website more delightful for users across all the browsers. Also, it helps websites to evolve better towards mobile-friendly user expectations.

What are Core Web Vitals?

core web vitals
The Core Web Vitals are usually a set of metrics that are much related to responsiveness, speed, and visual stability.

So, here is how Google has defined Core Web Vitals:

  • Largest Contentful Paint: It is referred to as the time that a main page takes to load the respective content. An ideal LCP measurement is usually 2.5 seconds or even faster.
  • First Input Delay: It is the time it takes for a page to become better interactive. An ideal measurement must be less than 100 ms.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift: It refers to the number of unexpected layout shifts for visual page content. An ideal measurement must be less than 0.1.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift

Google has designed these sets of metrics to help the site owners measure the kind of user experience they are offering. It serves better assessment of site loading, visual stability, and interactivity.

As Google says, Core Web Vitals are a set of some real-world and user-centered metrics, which usually quantify the key aspects for user experience.

It further measures the dimensions for web usability as it loads, so there’s no chance of accidentally tapping that button when it shifts under your finger.

The Core Web Vitals are not always set permanently. Hence, it means that they may change from year to year based on what users expect for a good web page experience.

As of now, Core Web Vitals are what we have discussed earlier. Google will also update its users in case there is any change in the metrics.

Things you need to know about page experience signal and ranking:

Google is now adding Core Web Vitals as a significant ranking factor. It is combining them with other user experience signals to help more site openers build pages that users prefer to visit more.

In case Google determines that a page is offering a high-quality user experience based on its page experience signal, then it will rank the page much higher in the search engine results page.

The relevance of content is very important when it comes to ranking. A page, along with content, that is highly relevant to a query will rank well even if it has a poor page experience signal.

On the other hand, Google states that a good page experience will not override having brilliant content. However, if multiple pages have similar content, page experience will become very important for search visibility.

Google further mentions that a page experience is a tie-breaker for sorts. In case there are two pages, both offering excellent content, the one with a stronger page experience signal will rank quite high in the search results.

Hence, Google suggests not to hang up on the page experience optimization, which can make your page content suffer. However, great content can easily outrank a great page experience.

Think of evaluating your page experience:

As a whole, there is no specific tool to evaluate your page experience. However, it is possible to measure the individual components, which are used to create the page experience signal.

How do you measure your Core Web Vitals?

When you go to measure your Core Web Vitals, you can use a variety of tools that Google itself offers. So, here are the tools to look for.

Chrome browser is soon about to make a plugin available to evaluate the Core Web Vitals for any of the webpages. Google is also working with its third parties to bring about other tools for easy assessment of Core Web Vitals.

Here is how one can measure the type of user experience signals:

-Safe browsing: You need to check the Security Issues report in Search Console for any of the issues with safe browsing.

  • Mobile-friendliness: You can also use the mobile-friendly test of Google.
  • HTTPS: In case a page is served over a secure HTTPS connection, it will display a lock icon in its browser address bar.
  • Intrusive interstitial guidelines: This one is also very crucial to know how things are going for your user experience.

Bottom line:
Google keeps working on introducing newer algorithms to improve the user experience. And Core Web Vitals is one of such metrics. However, there is no need to take any immediate action on it. Google says these changes will not happen until next year.

Google will come up with a 6 months’ notice before rolling out such features. The company is offering the site owners a heads up to keep them informed about the ranking change quite earlier.