Google's set of page experience metrics measuring loading, interactivity, and visual stability.
Core Web Vitals are a set of real-world performance metrics defined by Google to measure user experience on the web. As of 2024, the three core metrics are: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — how quickly the main content loads; Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — how responsive the page is to user interactions; and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — how stable the layout is as the page loads.
Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal through its 'Page Experience' update. While content quality and relevance remain dominant factors, Core Web Vitals can be a tiebreaker between pages of similar quality — particularly on mobile.
LCP target: under 2.5 seconds. INP target: under 200 milliseconds. CLS target: under 0.1. Pages scoring 'Good' on all three are considered passing. Pages scoring 'Needs Improvement' or 'Poor' on any metric may be at a competitive disadvantage.
For B2B sites, slow page loads are often caused by large unoptimized images, render-blocking JavaScript (especially from marketing tags and CRO tools), unoptimized web fonts, and third-party scripts from chat tools, analytics platforms, and ad networks.
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