Google’s New Ranking Factor – Core Web Vitals
Google makes hundreds of changes every year. They introduce new changes to their algorithm every week and occasionally announce changes in the ranking factor. They do this when something is crucial, and they encourage people, webmasters, to make changes in their websites beforehand.
Now you might be wondering what is special with the Core Web Vitals – Google’s next official ranking factor.
What Are Core Web Vitals?
These are real-world experience metrics that Google calls Page Experience Signals that answer questions like – how fast does the page loads? How fast it becomes stable? How fast is it interactive? Basically, how fast is the user experience in terms of speed and interaction when visitors use any web page on mobile or desktop.
Core Web Vitals is not much about the text of the webpage but more about the user experience and how pleasant it is to use the website, how useful it is, and things like that. These are important on mobile when the speed of the internet isn’t high. So, this is what Google is measuring!
How Will These Affect Ranking?
It is going to affect all the search results on mobile and desktop based on some criteria. One important point here is Core Web Vitals are going to become a basis to appear in the Google Top Stories. The previously used AMP will no more be a criterion to appear in Top Stories. You will have to meet the minimum inception of Core Web Vitals.
When is This New Ranking Factor Coming?
Well, according to the latest Google announcement, this is going to happen sometime in 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they have postponed the release of this within the algorithm and that they want to give webmasters some extra time to prepare.
How Big of a Change is It Going to Be?
One point to keep in mind is that Google has many ranking signals. So impact on any one of these is usually not that great. However, if your site is poor in only some of these metrics, then it could make a difference. According to Google’s own studies, it is observed that for pages that meet the thresholds of Core Web Vitals, visitors are 24% less likely to leave the site. This means gaining more traffic simply by making your website a little more usable.
Three Signals for Core Web Vitals 
Following are the three signals that go into Core Web Vitals:
1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
This basically asks layman’s questions like how fast does the webpage loads. This is a very easy concept, which is highly influenced by render time, text in the viewport, and the largest image and video.
2. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
With this signal, Google asks questions about how fast the page is stable. We all have had an experience where we’ve loaded a webpage on our mobile, we go to click a certain button, and at the last moment it shifts, and we hit something else, or there is an unexpected layout shift. That’s a poor experience. So, this is what Google measures with CLS.
3. First Input Delay (FID)
This question basically asks, how fast is the webpage interactive? To be precise, when a user clicks on something, how fast can the browser initiate the process and give the result. It’s not considered a good experience when you click on something, and nothing happens, and you have to wait for a long time. So here, Google measures this delay.
Core Web Vitals will have a huge importance in the coming days. Be ready to begin the game with it!
