The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
No, please, do read on. This is a post about what has gone wrong with Core Web Vitals[1] and where we stand now, but also why you still need to care. I also have some data along the way, showing how many sites are hitting the minimum level, both now and back at the original intended launch date.
At the time of writing, it’s nearly a year and a half since Google told us that they were once again going to pull their usual trick: tell us something is a ranking factor in advance, so that we improve the web. To be fair, it’s quite a noble goal all told (albeit one they have a significant stake in). It’s a well trodden playbook at this point, too, most notably with “mobilegeddon[2]” and HTTPS in recent years.
Both of those recent examples felt a little underwhelming when we hit zero-day, but the “Page Experience Update”, as Core Web Vitals’ rollout has been named, has felt not just underwhelming, but more than a little fumbled. This post is part of a 3-part series, where we’ll cover where we stand now, how to understand it, and what to do next.
Fumbled, you say?
Google was initially vague, telling us back in May 2020 that the update would be “in 2021”. Then, in November 2020, they told us it’d be in May 2021 — an unusually long total lead time, but so far, so good.
The surprise came in April, when we were told the update was delayed to June. And then in June, when it started rolling out “very slowly”. Finally, at the