Say Hello to Google's New Core Web Vitals Metric

All you SEO buffs will want to check it out. Google is replacing a Core Web Vitals Metric with something new and improved. That's the plan, anyway.


If you're familiar with the First Input Delay (FID, say goodbye to that and open your arms to give a big bear hug to Interaction to Next Paint (INP).

FID wasn't bad, but it only measured the delay, the time it takes for an interactive element to become responsive. It didn't measure the amount of time before your website reacted to those interactions. INP measures the entire responsiveness of a page, not just delay, but all how responsive your website is to all visitors' interactions.

You might be asking yourself how important this is, and if you are, here's the short answer: it's vital. A bad INP score is like a bad grade on your report card in school. Not only does it affect your users' experience (web surfers don't want to wait for slow-loading pages), but it will also affect your rankings.

INP is measured in milliseconds. According to Google, an INP score under 200 milliseconds means the page is fine. A score between 200 to 500 milliseconds indicates the page isn't bad but could be improved. A score above 500 milliseconds indicates poor responsiveness.

You can speed up those response times by improving image load time, compressing CSS and JavaScript files, and doing some overall tweaking, but you might want to get on it. INP will be a standard part of Core Web Vitals in March 2024.

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