Core Web Vitals measure how fast your main content loads, how quickly the page reacts and how stable it is. Here are the thresholds and the fixes that work on real sites.
This guide explains Core Web Vitals and how to fix each metric. It is part of my technical SEO work for clients.
Core Web Vitals are three metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP, loading), Interaction to Next Paint (INP, responsiveness) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS, visual stability). A page passes when, at the 75th percentile of real visits, LCP is 2.5 seconds or less, INP is 200 milliseconds or less and CLS is 0.1 or less.
| Metric | Measures | Good | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|
| LCP | Time until the largest image or text block is visible | 2.5 s or less | Over 4 s |
| INP | Delay between a tap or click and the next screen update | 200 ms or less | Over 500 ms |
| CLS | How much the layout jumps while loading | 0.1 or less | Over 0.25 |
INP replaced First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital in March 2024.
They are part of Google’s page experience signals. Google has said good page experience alone will not make a weak page rank, but between similar pages it helps, and slow pages lose visitors and sales whatever Google does. Google’s AI features documentation also lists good page experience among its recommendations.
Always trust field data first. A perfect Lighthouse score in the lab can still fail for real phone users.
fetchpriority="high". Never lazy-load the LCP image.font-display: swap.width and height (or aspect-ratio) on every image, video and iframe.font-display: optional or matched fallback fonts to stop text jumping when web fonts load.| Fix | Helps |
|---|---|
| Page caching plugin or server cache (for example LiteSpeed Cache) | LCP |
| Image optimisation to WebP with width and height | LCP, CLS |
| Delay non-critical JavaScript until interaction | INP, LCP |
| Remove unused plugins and page builder add-ons | All three |
| Host fonts locally, preload one or two | LCP, CLS |
A typical failing service page: hero image 1.8 MB PNG loaded by a slider script, three tracking scripts in the head and no image dimensions. Converting the hero to a 120 KB WebP in plain HTML, deferring the trackers and adding dimensions usually moves LCP and CLS into the “good” range on its own.
I audit and fix speed, Core Web Vitals, indexing, redirects and schema, and send you a clear report of every change.
Good means LCP of 2.5 seconds or less, INP of 200 milliseconds or less and CLS of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of real visits.
Yes. Interaction to Next Paint replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital in March 2024.
Lab scores vary with network and device conditions. Field data from real users is more stable and is what Search Console reports.
They are one part of page experience. Content relevance matters more, but speed still affects rankings between similar pages and always affects conversions.
The report uses 28 days of real-user data, so improvements show gradually over about four weeks.
Facts checked against these official pages on 10 October 2026. Read my editorial policy.
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