What are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals (CWV) are a set of webpage performance factors Google deems important for the user’s overall experience. Performance output is based on actual data from field users. A website’s CWV data is found under the enhancement section of the Google Search Console account. In gauging the end user experience, CWV is supplemented by ‘Other Web Vitals’ which consist of mobile friendly, safebrowsing, secure HTTP and non-intrusive interstitial ads.
CWV is composed of three measurements of page speed, user interaction and page stability. A URL’s performance for each of the three measurements is scored as Good, Need Improvement or Poor.
- Largest contentful paint (LCP) — How long the web page takes to load from the user’s point of view. It starts from when the user first clicks the link to when the majority of the content is populated on the screen. This metric is available using Google PageSpeed Insights.
- First input delay (FID) — The time it takes a user to interact with the page or the time it takes for a page element to respond to user input. This could be choosing a menu option, clicking a link or entering an email address in a field.
- Cumulative layout shift (CLS) — Visual stability as a web page loads content. High CLS means page elements move around during page loading and is a negative sign. Users could click on something by accident or have to re-read to see where elements finally rested.
Website’s can improve their CWV scores by:
- Removing unnecessary scripts especially from third parties.
- Switching to a faster web host or web hosting plan.
- Using browser cache.
- Implement ‘lazy loading’ where images only load when someone scrolling down the page gets to that section.
- Remove elements marked as dragging down page performance.
- Minify page code.
- Allocate space for embedded content such as ads.
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