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How to Analyze Core Web Vitals in GSC?
Get insights into your site's Core Web Vitals with Google Search Console APIs.
Core Web Vitals track how well your website is performing. They allow you to understand how people interact with your website, also providing insight into the user experience.
Google declared core web vital analysis an essential ranking factor in September 2022. Core Vitals will enable you to understand how users interact with your website and provide valuable insights.
Google Search Console (GSC) is a powerful free tool that helps you analyze and understand the performance of your website. GSC's core web vitals report can help you measure your web pages' performance for key metrics.
In this blog, learn how to analyze Core Web Vitals in GSC to optimize your website for a positive user experience. Get step-by-step instructions on how to leverage GSC core web vitals report for page speed success.
Overview of Core Web Vitals
The Core Web Vitals is the latest advancement in Google's effort to measure and improve website performance. They were first announced during the 2020 Google I/O event and are an evolution of the existing Page Speed Insights tool. Core web vital metrics give website owners and developers better insight into how their sites perform on various devices and browsers.
The Core Web Vitals measure a website's loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
Google has prioritized these metrics for search engine optimization (SEO), emphasizing their importance for ranking in its SERP results. Google's SERP algorithms prioritize pages with good Core Web Vitals scores, enabling you to improve your SEO ranking and visibility.
What are the Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals is a user-experience metric that quantifies a website's page loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability to provide insight into how well a page delivers the optimal user experience.
The core web vitals metrics have evolved since their inception. Initially, the metrics focused on page speed, with Google measuring the time it takes for a page to become interactive. However, as technology has advanced, the metrics have expanded to include the following:
1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the time it takes for the most prominent image or text block on the page to load.
2. First Input Delay (FID): Measures the time it takes for a user to interact with a page after it's loaded.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures the number of unexpected layout shifts on a page when it's loaded.
4. Interaction to Next Paint or INP (experimental metric): Measures the time it takes for a page to load after the user has interacted with it.
Although the Core Web Vitals are relatively new, they are essential to how Google ranks websites. Google has indicated that these metrics will factor into the overall page ranking algorithm and help determine a website's overall user experience.
Website owners and developers must pay attention to these metrics and ensure regular optimization for the best performance.
Core Web Vitals analysis and measurement are essential for web admins to ensure a positive user experience site-wide. It helps them understand how the page loads, identify potential issues, and make improvements.
Regularly monitoring core web vitals metrics can guide your optimization strategy for better performance, engagement, and conversion. It also helps web admins identify potential problems and take corrective measures to address them.
Google Core Web Vitals Scoring
Understanding Google Core Web Vitals scoring is essential to ensure your website performs optimally and provides visitors with the best experience. Google uses the Core Web Vitals scoring metrics to measure a website's performance and determine the performance grade it assigns to it.
The three primary Core Web Vitals metrics that Google uses to determine the overall performance grade of a website are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
Additionally, Google uses the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric to measure the time it takes for a user to interact with the page (click, scroll, etc.) and for the following visual content to appear.
Here is how Google categorizes scores for different core web vitals metrics:
1. LCP measures the time the page’s main content takes to render. The ideal score for LCP is 2.5 seconds or less.
2. FID measures the time it takes for a user’s first interaction with a page to be registered. The ideal score for FID is 100 milliseconds or less.
3. CLS measures the degree of unexpected movement in a page’s layout. The ideal score for CLS is 0.1 or less.
4. Finally, INP measures the load time of a website’s server. The ideal score for INP is 10 seconds or less.
Google uses these scores to assign an overall performance grade to a website. Google categorizes these scores into Good, Needs Improvement, and Poor.
A website will receive a Good grade if its Core Web Vitals scores fall under the ideal thresholds. A website will receive the Needs Improvement grade if one of its Core Web Vitals scores is within the ideal threshold and one is slightly above the ideal threshold but not too high. A website will receive a Poor grade if one or more Core Web Vitals scores are significantly above the ideal point.
Search Console Core Web Vitals Report
The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console (GSC) provides insights into your website performance for the Core Web Vitals metrics. It was launched in March 2021 to help web admins better understand how their websites perform regarding page loading times, interactivity, and visual stability.
The insights from the report can help you identify any issues that may adversely affect user experience. Fix these issues to improve performance and satisfaction. For example, the Core Web Vitals report can show which pages are not loading quickly enough or have excessive animation jank or layout shifts.
Benefits of using the Core Web Vitals report in GSC include:
1. Quickly identify potential performance issues with your website to rectify them.
2. Get a holistic overview of the performance of your website and individual URLs.
3. Compare the performance of individual pages over time to track the success of any performance optimization efforts.
4. Check the performance of web pages across different devices - desktop and mobile.
5. Monitor third-party content's performance to ensure it does not adversely affect user experience.
6. Set performance goals for your website, and track progress towards those goals.
7. Receive notifications whenever GSC identifies new performance issues so you can promptly act on them.
Here are the steps to help you gain access to the core web vital report for GSC.
Accessing GSC Core Web Vitals Report
Analyzing Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console can be done in simple steps. The report provides valuable insights into your site's mobile and desktop performance.
1. Sign in to Google Search Console.
2. Select the website for which you want to analyze the core web vitals.
1. Go to the Experience tab.
2. On the left side, you will find the option ‘Core Web Vitals.’
3. Click on the Core Web Vitals tab to generate the report. The report generated will contain core web vitals score for mobile and desktop.
4. Open the detailed report for one of the devices. You will see the number of URLs categorized based on how they score for core web vitals - Good, Needs Improvement, or Poor.
5. Below the chart, you will see URL groups and top issues causing your web pages to score low.
Analyzing & Optimizing Core Web Vitals in Search Console
Now that you can access the report let us break down all the insights you can receive from the information.
The Core Web Vitals report's overview page organizes the information by device type (Mobile or Desktop). Data is grouped according to URL status (Poor, Needs Improvement, or Good), where the status refers to the measure doing the worst for that set of URLs.
To view more performance information for a particular device type, open the report for that kind.
Step 1: Sort URLs by Core Web Vital Scores
Once you open the device-specific report, you will see a chart mapping URL performance based on Status. You can also see the number of URLs (not URL groups) under each status. Toggle the Poor, Need Improvement, or Good tabs on the performance chart to view the historical user data of how your URLs perform.
In the “Why URLs aren't considered good” table, examine the list of performance issues and click an example URL to discover more information on the “issue details” page. Issue details group by metric (FID, LCP, CLS). Google search console records the time it took for 75% of page requests to be able to react to the metric in the last 28 days.
The example URL is the one URL search Console displays for the entire URL group. The report groups URLs into pages with a similar user experience. The LCP, FID, and CLS status reflects this group's status as a whole.
There may have been some outliers with a better or worse value on some visits; 75% of visits to all URLs within the group experienced the same status. It is assumed that these groups use the same framework, so any issues regarding the poor behavior of the group are probably due to the exact root cause.
You can click the example URL to get a list of all URLs failing a core web vital metric threshold. Usually, pages with similar templates are affected by the same problem. It is especially true if you use a content management system (CMS) like WordPress or Webflow.
Step 2: Prioritizing Core Web Vitals Optimization
When you have thousands or millions of web pages on your domain, it takes time to prioritize what pages to optimize first. The logical step is to work on all pages with 'poor' scores. Alternatively, you can fix the low-hanging fruit or ‘Needs Improvements’ pages.
The Core Web Vitals optimization plan strategy depends on the project's workload, team size, and budget.
SEO platforms like Quattr can help prioritize your optimization efforts. Quattr builds an SEO data lake for your domain to include website page experience scores from GSC and Lighthouse. It then benchmarks these scores against top competing pages.
You can either optimize core web vital scores against competitive insights or use Quattr prioritized list. Quattr prioritizes page performance optimization based on multiple factors:
1. Number of Pages Impacted: Find how many pages are impacted by a particular problem and optimize multiple pages together.
2. Compare against business metrics: See how many clicks or impressions are affected by low core web vitals score. Quattr recommendations help align your core web vital optimization efforts with business ROI metrics.
3. Filter based on page type and importance: First, optimize key pages like the home or critical landing pages. Filter page-level data in Quattr and use a site hierarchy approach to your core web vitals optimization efforts.
Explore more on how Quattr can help optimize your core web vital scores.
Step 3: Test URL with Page Speed Insights or Lighthouse
The GSC Core web vitals report can pinpoint the URLs with a low score, but it is hard to know what is causing the problem. Diagnose the problem using other free tools Google provides, like Page Speed Insights and Google Lighthouse.
Page Speed Insights uses field and lab data from Chrome User Experience report to compute performance metrics and give a score based on performance. It also provides detailed recommendations for improving the score, such as reducing server response time, optimizing images, and reducing JavaScript execution time.
Google Lighthouse is an automated monitoring tool that will audit page performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. It runs tests against the page and then produces a report with an overall performance score, performance metrics, and recommended optimizations.
Please read our blog on PSI v/s Lighthouse to know which tool to choose and use.
Whichever tool you choose to decide, you will be able to pinpoint the reasons your core web vitals score is poor exactly.
Step 4: Resolve Core Web Vital Issues
A web admin uses various tools to identify the issue and gather data. Developers should use performance tools like Chrome User Experience Report and Lighthouse to measure and adjust the website or application.
Web admins should then create a plan of action to address the issue. It could include optimizing the website’s content, reducing the number of requests, or eliminating render-blocking resources. Developers should review the plan and offer input on potential solutions to implement.
Once the plan is created and approved, the developers should work to implement the necessary changes and monitor performance regularly. Web admins should also monitor the changes to ensure they result in improved performance.
Here are some best practices to optimize Core Web Vitals:
1. Minimize Resource Sizes: Optimize the size of files and resources on your website to make them as small as possible. It will allow them to load faster and reduce the total loading time.
2. Compress Resources: Compress large files and resources to reduce the file size and improve loading times.
3. Use Caching: Caching static resources can decrease page load times and reduce the strain on your server.
4. Optimize Images: Compressing and optimizing your images can reduce their file size, allowing them to load faster.
5. Reduce the Requests: Reduce the number of HTTP requests your page has to make and minimize the resources your page needs to load.
6. Reduce JavaScript and CSS: Reduce the size and number of JavaScript and CSS files your page has to download and reduce their loading time.
7. Prioritize Visible Content: Prioritize the loading of the visible content to the user so that it can be rendered quickly.
Following these best practices can deliver a more optimized user experience and improve your website's performance.
Step 5: Validate Issues in GSC
Once you have optimized your web pages for core web vitals, you need to validate fixes in GSC. Validation is essential to inform Googlebots of all holes and ensure search engines know you have optimized your web pages.
Go back to your core web vitals report and find the issue again. Click on the ‘Validate Fix’ button on the top.
The search console will run an initial test on the live page. If it detects a change, it will run an inspection and ensure the problem has been diagnosed. It is important to remember that the verification process may take up to 28 days.
Google will not use laboratory results but rather the Chrome User Experience Report data. This data is not immediate and is compiled over 28 days.
If the search console detects no change or does not result in good scores, you need to go back to the previous step.
Optimize & Review Core Web Vitals in GSC
It is essential to regularly optimize and review the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console to ensure that your website provides the best possible user experience.
Website owners should periodically review their Core Web Vitals report to identify any performance issues and take steps to address them. It includes optimizing page speed, loading time, and other metrics to ensure that pages load quickly and as expected. Additionally, website owners should review the report to check for any unexpected changes or problems.
Doing so will help you identify any issues related to page performance and speed and address them quickly. With the proper optimization techniques and constantly monitoring the Core Web Vitals, you can ensure that your website maintains a top-notch performance.
To optimize multiple web pages for Core Web Vitals, website owners can use the Quattr SEO platform. The tool simplifies the process by allowing you to track the performance of multiple pages at once and provides actionable insights to fix any issues. With Quattr SEO, you can optimize your website's speed, mobile compatibility, and user experience, all while monitoring your Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console.
Quattr quickly identifies which pages need improvement and prioritize them for optimization. The platform also allows you to track your progress over time to see the impact of your optimizations on your Core Web Vitals performance.
Regularly reviewing and optimizing the Core Web Vitals report can help websites drive more traffic and provide the best website performance.
Maximize your Core Web Vitals Analysis with Quattr
Get StartedGSC Core Web Vitals FAQs
How to Check Google Core Web Vitals?
You can check your Google Core Web Vitals with the help of Google Search Console. You will find a new tab, Core Web Vitals, to view your most important web metrics and how they change over time and measure your page rankings' performance.
Why should you regularly review your core web vitals score?
It is essential to regularly review your core web vitals to monitor if site speed, interactivity, and visual stability are improving or declining. It also helps to identify areas where website performance can be improved to enhance user experience.
What is the use of Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals is a set of essential metrics used to measure a website's perceived performance to estimate how good the user experience on a website may be. It includes LCP, FID, and CLS.
How does Core Web Vitals affect SERP Ranking?
Core Web Vitals are incorporated into Google's algorithm, which affects how a website fares in SERP rankings. A website's Core Web Vitals score directly affects its SERP visibility, which, in turn, affects the website's overall ranking and traffic.
About The Author
About Quattr
Quattr is an innovative and fast-growing venture-backed company based in Palo Alto, California USA. We are a Delaware corporation that has raised over $7M in venture capital. Quattr's AI-first platform evaluates like search engines to find opportunities across content, experience, and discoverability. A team of growth concierge analyze your data and recommends the top improvements to make for faster organic traffic growth. Growth-driven brands trust Quattr and are seeing sustained traffic growth.
