Why it matters for your business
A slow or jumpy website frustrates visitors, especially on phones, and many leave before the page finishes loading. Google uses Core Web Vitals as part of how it evaluates page experience. Good scores won’t beat great content on their own, but poor scores can hold a page back and cost you customers.
The three measurements
| Measurement | What it checks | Good score |
|---|---|---|
| LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) | How quickly the main content loads | 2.5 seconds or less |
| INP (Interaction to Next Paint) | How quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks | 200 milliseconds or less |
| CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) | How much the layout jumps around while loading | 0.1 or less |
Google measures these from real visits, and a page passes when at least 75% of visits meet the “good” level.
How to check or improve it
- Test your pages with Google’s PageSpeed Insights, or run our free audit.
- Compress and resize large images, which are the most common cause of slow LCP.
- Remove scripts and plugins you don’t need.
- Set sizes for images and ads so the layout doesn’t jump.
- Choose good hosting; a slow server slows everything else down.