Speed is a ranking factor and the first thing every visitor feels. Core Web Vitals — LCP, CLS and INP — measure the experience Google cares about. Here's what they mean, why they matter, and how to improve them.
A faster site ranks slightly better and converts noticeably better. The same fix that helps a page experience signal also keeps more of your existing visitors from bouncing.
Performance SEO isn't about chasing a perfect score — it's about passing the thresholds that matter to real users on real devices, especially mobile. The explainer below breaks down each Core Web Vital, what causes a poor score, and the concrete fixes. The audit also catches the unglamorous performance drains: unminified and uncompressed assets, oversized pages, and bloated templates.
The three Core Web Vitals, decoded — with the fix for each.
LCP, CLS and INP — what each measures, the "good" thresholds, what causes a poor score, and the practical fixes that move them. Plus why you should always test on mobile.
Grounded in the real checks the crawler and PageSpeed integration run.
Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP) via the PageSpeed integration · slow pages · page size too large · non-minified JavaScript and CSS · uncompressed (no gzip/brotli) JavaScript and CSS · render-blocking resources · missing viewport meta · sites still relying on plugins · usability and mobile-friendliness signals. Performance overlaps with the Images category, since unoptimised images are the most common cause of a poor LCP.
Free to start. Core Web Vitals plus every asset and template weighing your site down.
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