Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter "I don't know who needs to hear this but putting work in core web vitals doesn't mean that the site can't lose rankings over time." He then added "I also washed my car hundreds of times and it still left me standing on the highway."
Here is the tweet, even with a SpongeBob GIF:
I don't know who needs to hear this but putting work in core web vitals doesn't mean that the site can't lose rankings over time.
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (@methode) July 24, 2021
I also washed my car hundreds of times and it still left me standing on the highway. pic.twitter.com/7FceKqLDSz
Now, if you ask me to read into this tweet, it seems to me that Gary Illyes is kind of making fun of all those SEOs who complain that their rankings have dropped despite their core web vital scores being excellent.
As we've been reporting forever, core web vitals and the page experience update is super light and likely won't result in visible ranking changes for you or your clients. If you drop AMP and you are a publisher and you want in the top stores carousel, yes, it is a must. But outside of that, for SEO or ranking purposes, it is not a big deal at all. It is good for users, so sure, so do it. But do not think that if you score well with your core web vitals that you will rank well. It does not work that way.
In any event, I think Gary said it better than I could.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
