With Core Web Vitals now a key factor in search rankings for mobile and desktop, publishers must act now to safeguard traffic and revenue.
Core Web Vitals (CWVs) have already impacted search rankings for mobile, and with the desktop rollout now underway, they’re set to gain even greater importance for publishers. Due to complete by late March, we’ll see the familiar trio of CWV pillars incorporated as active measures for determining desktop search success – namely, first input delay (FID), largest contentful paint (LCP), and cumulative layout shift (CLS).
Why Core Web Vitals can no longer be ignored
According to a recent analysis of Chrome’s User Experience Report, Similar Web and global traffic data, only 31% of websites globally are compliant with all three CWV measures on mobile – just five percentage points higher than when CWVs became official KPIs for site evaluation last summer. But compliance with these user-centric metrics has never been more crucial – with those publishers that boost their search status able to drive higher visibility, traffic and revenue, as well as improved user experience. In fact, Google’s own research highlights major gains on mobile of up to 10% ad revenue uplift and 23% higher session duration.
And while site owners might assume they’ll have an easier time with desktop – with its superior connections and faster processing – that’s not necessarily the case. Figures from the Chrome User Experience Report show that, of the top 1000 media sites globally, only 59% meet the requirements for CLS on desktop. That’s even lower than compliance on mobile, at 67%, and leaves publishers at risk of accidental clicks from readers – potentially leading to penalties from Google and a significant hit to revenues.
The risk of sudden changes
Even those with good scores can’t afford to be complacent: often, seemingly minor changes to a site, such as adding a new script or vendor, could cause a sudden drop in scores that isn’t immediately obvious.
For example, one of Clickio’s publisher partners saw a significant fall in their CLS score last July, shortly after making some changes to the setup of their Progressive Web App (PWA).