From June 2021, Google is going to start considering “Page Experience” as part of Search ranking, as measured by a set of metrics called Core Web Vitals.

The Core Web Vitals are a set of three metrics designed to measure the “core” experience of whether a website feels fast or slow to the users, and so gives a good experience.

Smashing Magazine’s Barry Pollard has published an in-depth guide mo measuring core web vitals.

He says, “Web pages will need to be within the green measurements for all three Core Web Vitals to benefit from any ranking boost.

1. LARGEST CONTENTFUL PAINT (LCP)

This metric is probably the easiest understood of these — it measures how quickly you get the largest item drawn on the page — which is probably the piece of content the user is interested in. This could be a banner image, a piece of text, or whatever. The fact that it’s the largest contentful element on the page is a good indicator that it’s the most important piece. LCP is relatively new, and we used to measure the similarly named First Contentful Paint (FCP) but LCP has been seen as a better metric for when the content the visitor likely wants to see is drawn.

LCP is supposed to measure loading performance and is a good proxy for all the old metrics we in the performance community used to use (i.e. Time to First Byte (TTFB), DOM Content Loaded, Start Render, Speed Index) — but from the experience of the user”.

An In-Depth Guide To Measuring Core Web Vitals

Smashing Magazine

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