Google's John Mueller said it again, he said on LinkedIn, "We've been pretty clear that Core Web Vitals are not giant factors in ranking, and I doubt you'd see a big drop just because of that." Google has been saying Core Web Vitals are important in general but when it comes to search rankings, they have never been that important.
That has been the line Google has been walking on ever since the metric was released. But since it is a metric Google has and uses, SEOs have been obsessing over it.
This response from John was related to a LinkedIn post that asks/claims that Core Web Vitals have "become a significant ranking factor." John responded that no, it is not. Here is the full response:
We've been pretty clear that Core Web Vitals are not giant factors in ranking, and I doubt you'd see a big drop just because of that. That said, having a website that provides a good experience for users is worthwhile, because if users are so annoyed that they don't want to come back, you're just wasting the first-time visitors to your site, regardless of where they come from.Finally, having tried to get a meta tag or a robots.txt line changed on a big company website, I think smaller sites have a gigantic advantage when it comes to being able to take advantage of changes - they can be so much more nimble. None of this is easy, you still need to figure out what to change to adapt to a dynamic ecosystem online, but I bet if you want to change your site's robots.txt (for example), it's a matter of 30 minutes at most.
Here is my previous coverage of this topic, if you want it, and I am sure I am missing some of it:
- Google: Core Web Vitals Aren't As Important As Some People Might Think
- Google Clarifies Page Experience & Core Web Vitals Related To Search Rankings
- Here Is What Changed With The Google Helpful Content Guidance - Page Experience & More
- Google: The Page Experience Update Won't Be A Massive Change To Start
- Google: Page Experience Is A Ranking Signal, Not A Ranking System
- Google: We Don't Say Core Web Vitals Are A Ranking Factor
- Google: Fix Your INP Issues? Don't Expect Visibility Changes Search Rankings.
- Google: Core Web Vitals Shouldn't Be Top Of The List For Most Small & Local Businesses
- Google Says Now The Page Experience Update Is More Than A Tie Breaker Ranking Factor
- Google: No Sudden Ranking Drop When The Page Experience Update Goes Live
- Poll On Impact Of Google Page Experience Update & Core Web Vitals On Rankings
- Gary Illyes From Google Mocks Core Web Vitals SEO Work
- Google: Pages With Core Web Vitals May Have Tiny Ranking Advantage
- Google: It's Unlikely Core Web Vitals Will Become The Primary Ranking Factor
- Google: Page Speed Issues Wouldn't Lead To Your Site Being Removed From Google Search
- Google: Don't Worry Too Much About Page Speed
- Google: A Good Page Experience Doesn't Fix Other SEO Problems
- Confirmed: Google Site Speed Is A Teeny-Tiny Ranking Factor
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
