What Are Core Web Vitals and Why Google Cares About Speed
Core Web Vitals are key metrics that Google uses to evaluate how fast, stable, and user-friendly your website is.
Google no longer looks only at your website’s content — it also looks at how users feel while using it. Core Web Vitals are a set of technical measurements that assess how fast, responsive, and stable a website is. They directly impact SEO and your Google search ranking.
There are three main metrics that make up Core Web Vitals: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), FID (First Input Delay), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift). Each measures a different aspect of user experience.
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) measures how quickly the main content of a page loads — for example, the headline, image, or text that the user sees first. Ideally, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds. If your page takes too long to display key elements, users will assume it’s broken.
FID (First Input Delay) measures how quickly the page responds to a user’s first interaction (click, scroll, typing). If a user clicks a button and nothing happens for 2 seconds, the FID is poor. A good result is under 100 milliseconds — the page should respond instantly.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measures the stability of elements on the screen. If text, images, or buttons shift around while the page loads, that’s a bad experience. Google wants content to stay stable during loading because users get frustrated when a button they’re about to click suddenly moves.
Why does Google care about this? Because it wants users to get not only accurate results but pleasant ones too. If two pages have similar content, Google will rank the one with faster loading and better Core Web Vitals higher.
Speed directly affects business performance: every extra second of loading time can reduce conversions by up to 20%. Users don’t wait — if a site loads slowly, they go elsewhere. That means fewer inquiries, fewer sales, and weaker SEO.
Technically, Core Web Vitals can be improved by optimizing images (WebP format), using modern frameworks like Next.js, proper caching, and serverless architecture. Next.js helps especially by generating static pages that load instantly without extra server calls.
Google provides tools like 'PageSpeed Insights' and 'Search Console' to track Core Web Vitals performance. These tools show what’s slowing down your site — images, fonts, scripts — and give specific suggestions for improvement.
For small businesses, this isn’t just a technical detail — it’s a business opportunity. Faster websites get more visits, better SEO, and lower advertising costs because Google favors them in both search results and ad campaigns (Google Ads).
At KOD, every project is automatically optimized for Core Web Vitals. That means: fast images, cached pages, stable design, and instant response. The result — better Google rankings and more conversions without extra ad spending.
Conclusion: Core Web Vitals are the heart of modern SEO. If you want Google to like your site, it must be fast, stable, and easy to use. This isn’t a luxury — it’s the basic standard of digital business in 2025.