Image: Dorothe from Pixabay
Google is today introducing Interaction to Next Paint (INP) to its Core Web Vitals metrics, replacing First Input Delay.
The new metric uses data from the Event Timing API to assess the responsiveness of a webpage.
INP observes the latency of all click, tap, and keyboard interactions with a page throughout its lifespan, and reports the longest duration, ignoring outliers.
When a page responds to an interaction, it provides visual feedback in the next frame to show the interaction was successful, for example showing that an item added to a shopping cart is actually being added.
A delay to visual feedback, makes users think the page isn't responding to their actions. This may result in them clicking multiple times or moving off the page, and a poor user experience.
A low INP score shows good responsiveness, meaning the page can consistently respond quickly to the vast majority of user interactions.
Google defines a good INP score as equal to or less than 200 milliseconds.
The change comes at the same time as the rollout of Google’s March 2024 core and spam updates, but is not related to these. This may cause some confusion among SEOs but any change in rankings is likely to be caused by the updates, rather than the Core Web Vitals change.
Core Web Vitals and rankings
Google says its ranking systems look at a variety of signals that align with overall page experience; there is no single signal.
In an update to the document on page experience in Search, Google clarified how Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems.
Google recommends SEOs achieve good Core Web Vital scores, but notes there's more to a great page experience than Core Web Vitals scores alone and focusing too heavily on these may not be the best use of your time.
"Core Web Vitals are used by our ranking systems. We recommend site owners achieve good Core Web Vitals for success with Search and to ensure a great user experience generally. Keep in mind that getting good results in reports like Search Console's Core Web Vitals report or third-party tools doesn't guarantee that your pages will rank at the top of Google Search results; there's more to great page experience than Core Web Vitals scores alone. These scores are meant to help you to improve your site for your users overall, and trying to get a perfect score just for SEO reasons may not be the best use of your time.
Beyond Core Web Vitals, other page experience aspects don't directly help your website rank higher in search results. However, they can make your website more satisfying to use, which is generally aligned with what our ranking systems seek to reward. Therefore it's still worth working to improve page experience overall."
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