New Core Web Vitals - Important Changes to Core Web Vitals

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Google Search Console page quality reports will soon be enhanced with INP (Interaction to Next Paint) . This is a new core web metric. INP describes the speed of a page after it has loaded. The FID metric previously used for this purpose will be removed in March 2024.

In this post, you will learn what INP is, how it is measured, and why it is worth improving. I will also mention why FID has never been the best metric. I will also assess whether this change will be beneficial for website owners.

Contents
What does the INP indicator mean?
Is the INP an average of all interaction times?
How to interpret INP results?
Why is FID not the best indicator?
Summary
What does the INP indicator mean?
The INP score evaluates the time from user interaction with the page to a noticeable change in its appearance. A low INP score indicates that interactions are fast and the delay (e.g. from clicking a button to a noticeable change in appearance) is low and should not negatively impact the user experience of the page . The quality of such a page, if it also meets other Google criteria (LCP, CLS, mobile-friendliness), will be rated as good.

A high INP score indicates an issue that needs to be investigated and fixed to reduce user churn and improve your Google search results.

Is the INP an average of all interaction times?
No, INP is the time corresponding to the highest latency of the interaction . This means that if the user performed 3 interactions and their latency was 100, 150 and 200 ms, the INP indicator would show 200 ms .

The exception to this rule are pages with a high number of interactions, for which the INP will correspond to the 98th or 99th percentile. Of course, these are current values ​​as of the date of writing this post and may change more than once.

The bottom line is that INP has no mercy . Even one extended interaction during a standard user visit can completely ruin the INP score for that visit .

Of course, it's still important to remember that Google ultimately evaluates the 75th percentile of all visits. This also applies to the other core web vitals currently in use . So if three out of four users have satisfactory INP scores, the fourth's scores won't lower the overall score.

There will always be individual users with a slower device or who use your site more spain telemarketing data intensively. Your site will not suffer any consequences for the existence of such exceptions. However, it is worth striving for as many users as possible to have a satisfactory INP.

How to interpret INP results?
The normal range of INP values ​​is shown in the graphic below:


Values ​​below 200 ms (this is the interaction delay time for the slowest interaction during the visit) are OK. From 200 to 500 ms - they require improvement, and above this value are bad and definitely require intervention.

Why is FID not the best indicator?
The FID indicator assessed only the delay after the first interaction ( First I nput Delay ). When this time is extended ( over 100 ms), the user's first impression may be bad and affect their (un)willingness to continue browsing the page.

However, a satisfactory FID result did not mean much on its own. Yes, the first interaction may have been successful, but what good is it if subsequent interactions are associated with a significant delay?

So while the FID indicator seems specific to really bad sites, it is not very sensitive in detecting them. It is easy to miss a bad site this way.

Our experience at the interactive agency RekinySukcesu.pl shows that the FID indicator is rarely exceeded. Usually, the comments in Google Search Console concern LCP and CLS. Theoretically, this is a reason for satisfaction, but such a good positive result raises doubts as to whether the FID indicator is really effective in detecting problems and differentiating pages in terms of speed of operation. We hope that INP will give us much more precise feedback on the quality of the page.

Summary
Should we be happy about the appearance of a new metric? In my opinion, the most important thing is that optimizing INP is beneficial both in terms of SEO and taking care of the right UX. By investing time and money in lowering INP, you are acting on at least two tracks and can expect to improve both your position in Google and your on-page conversion rates.

The FID used so far rarely forced developers to make corrections, but that also made it unhelpful.

Google is constantly striving to make its search engine as attractive as possible for users and provide the best search results. INP is one of hundreds of factors that are taken into account. In addition to the beneficial impact of its optimization on conversions, INP has the advantage over other ranking factors that it is easily measurable. That is why I think it is worth making friends with this indicator and treating it as your ally.