But how does Google measure this notion? As you might expect, its powerful algorithm uses multiple parameters for this purpose. However, it is the Core Web Vitals (or essential Web signals ), implemented in May 2021, which remain one of Google's major tools for measuring user experience on a technical level. We then speak of Webperf or Web performance .
Is all this still unclear to you? Do you want to find out more about these measures? We’ll explain everything to you.
In this photo, a man analyzes his user experience.
Core Web Vitals: What are they?
With Core Web Vitals, Google measures data that it considers essential for a site's positioning.
Before May 2021, you could track your user experience (UX) KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) with Google's Page Experience, a tool that helped you better understand how people navigate different pages on a website.
Now, this measurement is more precise and is based on 3 more technical indicators :
LCP , Largest Contentful Paint, which can be translated as the “maximum display time of the largest block” ;
FID , First Input Delay , which measures the interactivity of a web page;
CLS , Cumulative Layout Shift, which evaluates the visual stability of a web page.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
The Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP, is an indicator that measures the time it takes for the largest content (in terms of size) to appear on the screen. Note that this can be text, an image, a video, etc. In other words, it is the display speed of this element , or the waiting time for Internet users.
Knowing that users are increasingly in a hurry, this user experience metric is crucial. Indeed, the average waiting time tolerated by Internet users is estimated at 5 seconds on a computer and 3 seconds on mobile . If your pages take longer to load, it is statistically proven that more than half of users will leave your site.
You can then easily imagine the consequences on your bounce rate , the number of pages viewed, the conversion rate, etc.
For a good user experience, your site's LCP should therefore be around 2.5 seconds (to be counted after the page starts loading).
First Input Delay (FID)
First Input Delay, or FID, is an indicator that measures the office 365 database interactivity (or responsiveness) of a web page, that is, the time required between the moment when the user performs a first action (a click on a product, for example) and the moment when the browser can respond.
As a general rule, Google recommends an FID below 100ms for the user experience to be considered “good.”
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Cumulative Layout Shift, or CLS, is the indicator that measures the visual stability of the content of a web page.
You've probably been in this situation before: you go to a web page and you find yourself facing unexpected layout changes (font changes, text or image blocks that don't keep the same position, text that goes down, etc.). However, these are all points that affect the overall visual stability of the page and therefore the user experience.
Concretely, for a good user experience, pages must keep a CLS lower than 0.1 .
In this screenshot, data for a good user experience.
As you will have understood, for Google, user experience and natural referencing (SEO) are not limited to the quality of online content. It is also a question of taking into account the technical performance of the website concerned. It is therefore better to consider these 3 indicators to optimize the web performance of your pages.
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How to check and track a website's Core Web Vitals?
Now that we've covered what Core Web Vitals are, let's review the ways you can check your site's performance .
There are indeed several free and online measurement tools. While one of the most used is undoubtedly PageSpeed Insights , you can also favor Google Search Console which includes these metrics. We explain how to do it.
Measuring Core Web Vitals with Google Search Console
Google Search Console is Google's free tool that allows webmasters or website owners to track the health of their site. It is therefore logical that Google, on the initiative of Core Web Vitals, integrates these measurements into its own tool.
Google Search Console reports the performance of URLs (pages) grouped by status, metric type, and group of similar web pages. To do this, go to the “Improvements” menu, then “Web Vitals.”
The generated report allows you to identify pages that are too slow and indicators to optimize, an example of which is as follows.
In this screenshot, a report to identify pages that are too slow and indicators to optimize.
To the right of this image you can see all the URLs to optimize that have a measurement that is too high.
To find out exactly which pages of your website are affected by the suggested improvements, simply click on one of the issues indicated to see the details of those pages.
Measuring Core Web Vitals with PageSpeed Insights
In addition to being free, PageSpeed Insights is particularly easy to use and comprehensive. It analyzes the page you indicate to it , in order to give you its overall score and detailed scores for each indicator (LCP, FID, CLS). The cherry on the cake is that it offers you recommendations to optimize your Core Web Vitals.
In this screenshot, recommendations for optimizing your Core Web Vitals.
