Core Web Vitals
In short
Core Web Vitals are three measurements Google uses to assess the experience on a page: loading, responsiveness and how stable the content is.
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is the time before the largest element, often an image or a heading, is visible. INP (Interaction to Next Paint) is how quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks. It replaced the older measurement FID in 2024. CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measures how much the content jumps around while the page loads.
The thresholds Google counts as good
According to Google's own site web.dev, LCP should be 2.5 seconds or less, INP 200 milliseconds or less and CLS 0.1 or less. The thresholds should hold for at least 75 percent of page views, measured separately on mobile and desktop.
Why it matters to you
The numbers measure things the customer actually feels. That annoying jump when a button moves just as you press it is poor CLS. Google uses the measurements in ranking, but a relevant answer to the search still carries the most weight.
How to check your own
Open Google Search Console and the Core Web Vitals report. There you can see which pages are good, need improvement or are poor, based on real visits. If the site has too little traffic for the report to show anything, paste the address into pagespeed.web.dev instead. See page speed for the most common fixes.
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