Glossary · Technical
Core Web Vitals
Definition. Core Web Vitals are Google's three page-experience metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (loading), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness) and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability). They are a lightweight ranking signal and a heavy conversion one.
Their ranking effect is small and often overstated. Their effect on whether people stay long enough to read anything is not.
Field data from real users, which is what Google uses, frequently differs from lab scores. Optimise for the field data in Search Console rather than a synthetic score.
On most sites the culprits are the same three things: unoptimised images, render-blocking third-party scripts, and layout shifts from ads or late-loading fonts.
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Related terms
Indexation
Indexation is whether a search engine has stored your page and made it eligible to appear in results. A…
Page experience
Page experience is Google's umbrella term for signals about how it feels to use a page: loading…
More in Technical: Internal linking · Anchor text · Orphan page · Crawl budget · Indexation · Canonical URL · Duplicate content · Keyword cannibalization
Frequently asked questions
What does Core Web Vitals mean?
Core Web Vitals are Google's three page-experience metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (loading), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness) and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability). They are a lightweight ranking signal and a heavy conversion one.
Why does Core Web Vitals matter for AI SEO?
Their ranking effect is small and often overstated. Their effect on whether people stay long enough to read anything is not.
What is the most common mistake with core web vitals?
On most sites the culprits are the same three things: unoptimised images, render-blocking third-party scripts, and layout shifts from ads or late-loading fonts.
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