Chrome introduces “Core Web Vitals” so you can build a better website

When talking about search engine optimization in Sweden, it’s almost synonymous with optimizing for Google’s search engine since over 90% of Swedes use Google. By listening to and reading news from Google’s team, you can adapt your site for the best results. Now they’ve released a new tool & guide to help you: Web Vitals.

Web Vitals is a simpler tool

Their tool Web Vitals takes the pulse of your site and provides guidance so your site sends the right quality signals to Googlebot, helping you achieve good rankings and the chance to appear for your chosen keywords.

The problem has been that many older tools & programs were difficult to understand for those without training or experience in web development, IT, or SEO. With Web Vitals, Google is trying to solve that—it’s meant to be more user-friendly for the average person. The tool focuses on the core of your site, the most important parts that must work well for your site to send the right quality or trust signals to Googlebot and your visitors.

And the best part? You can get a Core Web Vitals report directly in Google Search Console! In the Swedish GSC, the tool is called “Core Web Vitals report”.

What does Web Vitals measure?

What the tool measures can of course change over time, but in 2020 Google’s team explained that the focus is on three areas:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• First Input Delay (FID)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

And what on earth does that mean? Let’s try to explain!

1 Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

This metric looks at loading time. How long does it take to load your site? Google’s team has decided that the first page should load within 2.5 seconds in order not to appear slow or even broken.

2 First Input Delay (FID)

FID evaluates the site’s interactivity. The tool checks how long it takes for the site to respond when a visitor interacts with it. When someone clicks a link, tries to watch a video, or switches pages, Web Vitals measures how long it takes the site to react and do what the visitor wants. These types of actions should take less than 100 milliseconds.

3 Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

This metric measures the visual stability of the page, meaning whether the page maintains the same layout and appearance once fully loaded. On many sites you might be reading an article when suddenly the entire text jumps due to a late-loading ad, or the text is covered by an annoying pop-up for their newsletter. Sometimes it’s not just irritating—this kind of delayed loading can be a sign of a poorly built site.

To measure CLS, the tool uses its own scale where you want the site to be under 0.1. Anything over 0.25 is considered poor.

We (and Google) hope this makes it easier for site owners to diagnose their own sites and understand how they can optimize them.