What are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are a set of specific factors that Google considers vital in a site’s UX. These metrics are specific to page speed and user interaction measurements. They include:

1. Largest contentful paint – LCP
2. First input delay – FID
3. Cumulative layout shift – CLS

Here are the benchmarks for each metric:

Use These Tools to Measure Your Core Web Vitals:

1. Google Search Console
2. Page Speed Insights
3. Lighthouse Web Dev Tools
4. Chrome User Experience Report

1. Google Search Console: https://search.google.com/search-console

What is Google Search Console?

It’s a free Google tool that “lets you easily monitor and in some cases resolve server errors, site load issues, and security issues like hacking and malware. You can also use it to ensure any site maintenance or adjustments you make happen smoothly with respect to search performance.”

Here’s how to check your core web vitals with it: 

• Create a Gmail account if you don’t already have one.
• With a Gmail account, sign in to Google Search Console here: https://search.google.com/search-console/
• Add your domain.
• Verify you own the domain. If you have your domain DNS access, use the first option. For other options to verify your site, you can use the URL prefix login.

• Once verified, you’ll be able to see your core web vitals by selecting the menu option on the left under the Experience tab called “Core Web Vitals.”

• Now that you can see your core web vitals, you’ll be able to address any URLs identified to be “good,” “poor,” or “needs improvement.”

2. Page Speed Insights: https://pagespeed.web.dev/ 

What are Page Speed Insights?

PageSpeed Insights (PSI) reports are Google developer tools on the performance of a page on both mobile and desktop devices and provide suggestions on how that page may be improved. https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v5/about 

This is an easy report to generate to give you action items to improve your site.

3. Lighthouse Web Dev Tools: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse

What are the Lighthouse Web Dev Tools?

Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. You can run it against any web page, public or requiring authentication. It has audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, SEO, and more.

Here’s how to run it for your site: 

• Open your Chrome browser. 
• In Google Chrome, go to the URL you want to audit. You can audit any URL on the web.
• Open Chrome DevTools.

• Click Run audit. After 30 to 60 seconds, Lighthouse gives you a report on the page.

4. Bonus but a bit more technical, Chrome User Experience Report: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-user-experience-report 

What is the Chrome User Experience Report?

The Chrome User Experience Report is powered by real user measurement of key user experience metrics across the public web, aggregated from users who have opted-in to syncing their browsing history, have not set up a Sync passphrase, and have usage statistic reporting enabled.

The Chrome User Experience Report is provided as a public project on Google BigQuery. To access the project, you’ll need a Google account and a Google Cloud Project: refer to Google’s step-by-step guide and the guided tour of how to query the project.

These tools combined will give you direct feedback on how to improve your site for better SEO and to match the expectations Google has for your website’s core web vitals.

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