Core Web Vitals still overlooked: site optimization tips
There are now less than 6 months to the start of the Page Experience Update that, as announced by Google in recent weeks, will officially become a ranking factor from May 2021, but the sites seem to be still far behind in the optimization work. According to an American research, in fact, less than 15% of the sample analyzed meets the benchmarks and exceeds the evaluation criteria on the experience provided to users: here are then a series of indications and advice to improve the performance of the pages and prepare for this “revolution”.
The study on Core Web Vitals and sites today
Providing an account of this analysis is Matt Southern on Search Engine Journal, which reveals that only “a decidedly small percentage of websites is able to pass an assessment of Vitals Core Web within Pagespeed Insights”.
To be precise, looking at the overall parameters of the first three Core Web Vitals indicated by Google only “12% of results on mobile devices and 13% on desktop have passed the evaluation”, although site performance is a bit better “when it comes to meeting benchmarks for a single factor”.
Results of the analysis: issues for visual stability and loading speed
Specifically, for the First Input Delay “99% of desktop Urls and 89% of mobile Urls meet the benchmark of 100 milliseconds”, and this “is a good sign for users, as it means they will be able to interact immediately with almost any page they arrive on”.
More problematic the other two parameters: for the Largest Contentful Paint “43% of Urls for mobile devices and 44% of desktop Urls pass the evaluation” and then loads the main content in less than 2.5 seconds. For the Cumulative Layout Shift they exceed the rating of 0.1 “46% of mobile Urls and 47% of desktop Urls”.
This means, then, that “most of the pages on which users land takes more than 2.5 seconds to load and shows unexpected layout changes“, thus providing a non-optimal experience to people, who must “wait for a page to load while the content swings up and down the screen”.
Where to focus the efforts
Core Web Vitals, as we know, are indicators that measure the quality of the browsing experience and that have been introduced to give a reference to sites on the “page experience” level offered, with the aim of constantly improving the quality of people’s experience on the Web, which should always be “useful and enjoyable”.
What emerges from the study is that currently the most critical areas seem to be LCP and CLS, and therefore speed and stability of the layout are the aspects on which to focus efforts and i