What is Google’s Core Web Vitals update? In early 2020, scuttlebutt (Navy and Marine jargon for gossip) began to appear on the internet regarding a Google update targeted at improving UX (user experience - how a user experiences and interacts with a web page). Not long after the gossip began, Google announced the addition of core web vitals as a ranking signal for search results. Core web vitals are universally applicable website metrics used to loosely gauge UX. Google rarely announces algorithm updates before they are released, so knowing what will become a ranking signal and how it will be measured is powerful information. In this article, we’ll briefly discuss the following: What Google rankings are What core web vitals are How the new Google core algorithm update will impact rankings How you can measure/evaluate your website’s core web vitals What are Google Rankings When we say “ranking(s)”, we’re referring to where your website appears on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) for queries related to your business. For example, let’s say you work as a plumber in Idaho and someone searches “plumbing services in Idaho”. If one of your site’s web pages appears as the third organic entry listed on the first page of Google for that query, we’d say you rank #3. If it was the #3 entry on the second page, we’d say you rank #13. Each Google SERP traditionally has 10 organic entries (there are situations where there may be fewer, but the norm is 10
