What are Core Web Vitals?
Google's three page experience measures, what each one actually captures, and what usually breaks them.
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What are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are three measures Google uses to assess page experience: Largest Contentful Paint for loading speed, Interaction to Next Paint for responsiveness, and Cumulative Layout Shift for visual stability. They are measured on real visits, not in a lab.
The three measures
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | How long until the main content appears. Good: under 2.5 seconds. |
|---|---|
| Interaction to Next Paint (INP) | How quickly the page responds to a tap or click. Good: under 200ms. |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | How much content jumps around while loading. Good: under 0.1. |
What usually breaks them
- Large unoptimised images, which is the most common LCP failure.
- Render-blocking third-party scripts — chat widgets, tag managers, ad code.
- Fonts loading late and reflowing the text, which hurts CLS.
- Images and embeds without width and height attributes.
- Heavy JavaScript bundles blocking the main thread, which hurts INP.
How much do they affect rankings?
They are a genuine ranking signal but a modest one compared with relevance and authority. The stronger argument is commercial: slow pages lose visitors before they arrive, and that loss is invisible in analytics because the visit never registers.
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