Core Web Vitals
Also called: CWV, Web Vitals, page experience signals, LCP INP CLS
Core Web Vitals are three Google metrics that measure real-user page experience: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) for loading, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) for responsiveness, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) for visual stability. They are part of Google's page experience ranking signals.
The three metrics and their targets
Each metric has a “good” threshold that Google measures at the 75th percentile of real visits, split across mobile and desktop:
- LCP (loading): 2.5 seconds or faster.
- INP (responsiveness): 200 milliseconds or less.
- CLS (visual stability): 0.1 or less.
INP became the stable responsiveness metric in 2024, replacing First Input Delay. FID only measured the delay before the first interaction. INP looks at the latency of interactions across the whole visit, so it is a harder number to pass.
Google scores these from field data (the Chrome User Experience Report), not a single lab test. A Lighthouse or PageSpeed run is a useful diagnostic, but the CrUX data from actual Chrome users is what feeds the ranking assessment.
On ranking, Core Web Vitals sit inside Google’s page experience signals, which “aligns with what our core ranking systems seek to reward.” They are a real input, not a myth. But Google is blunt that they do not override relevance: “Google Search always seeks to show the most relevant content, even if the page experience is sub-par.” Good vitals help most when several pages are equally relevant.
For AI search, Core Web Vitals are not a direct citation factor in AI Overviews or ChatGPT answers. Speed still matters indirectly, since a page that renders fast and stays stable is easier for crawlers to fetch and parse.
How it affects your traffic
Core Web Vitals rarely move you from page three to page one on their own, but they act as a quality gate on competitive queries where relevance is a wash. A slow LCP or high CLS on mobile can cap how far a well-written page climbs, and it drives up bounce, which erodes the engagement you worked to earn. The bigger business risk is conversion: layout shift and sluggish interactions cost sales on the exact pages you paid to rank. Fixing vitals is usually cheaper than the traffic it protects.
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