Core Web Vitals don't impact rankings meaningfully
Today’s opinion post is by Chris Shuptrine, Creator at SEOWidgets. He has over 15 years of experience in marketing, SEO, and analytics.
Having worked in technical SEO for over a decade, I’ve seen plenty of ranking factors come and go. Core Web Vitals (CWV) sparked quite the frenzy when Google announced them, but the reality I’ve observed is far more nuanced than the initial hype suggested.
Through analyzing hundreds of client sites, I’ve found CWV to be just another technical consideration rather than the SEO revolution many claimed. Yes, these metrics - LCP, FID, and CLS - matter for user experience. We’ve all felt that frustration when a page loads slowly or elements jump around. But in terms of actual ranking impact? The data just doesn’t support the dramatic claims.
Working with enterprise clients across various industries, I consistently see content quality and relevance driving rankings far more than perfect CWV scores. Take one of my recent B2B software clients - their technical documentation pages rank exceptionally well despite middling page speed scores, simply because the content thoroughly addresses user needs.
The ranking algorithm’s complexity can’t be overstated. Having attended several Google webmaster conferences, I’ve heard directly from search engineers about the hundreds of signals they evaluate. CWV is just one small piece of this intricate puzzle.
Most modern websites already meet basic performance thresholds. Our development team regularly implements performance optimizations, but we’ve noticed diminishing returns once sites reach “good enough” speeds. The difference between a 2.4s and 2.2s LCP rarely moves the needle in rankings.
Google themselves confirmed CWV acts as a tiebreaker between otherwise equal pages. In my experience auditing competitive SERPs, such exact ties almost never occur in practice. The nuances in content quality, topical authority, and backlink profiles create natural separation.
User behavior varies significantly by context. While quick load times matter for ecommerce product pages (we saw this clearly with a retail client), B2B buyers researching enterprise software care far more about comprehensive information than millisecond improvements.
The fundamentals that consistently drive results remain:
- Creating and maintaining rich, high-value content
- Building authoritative, quality backlinks
- Understanding and targeting user intent
- Optimizing for relevant keywords and phrases
Technical optimization absolutely matters for user experience - I’ve seen bounce rates improve dramatically after speed enhancements. But that’s different from direct ranking impact.
My recommendation to clients is always to maintain solid technical foundations while investing most resources in content quality and topical authority. One manufacturing client saw far better results from developing in-depth technical guides than from shaving 0.2 seconds off their load time.
Google’s core mission hasn’t changed - they want to surface the most relevant, highest-quality results for users. In my years of SEO testing and analysis, content depth and authority consistently outweigh minor technical advantages.
While we should absolutely monitor and maintain good performance metrics, obsessing over perfect CWV scores often diverts resources from more impactful initiatives. Focus first on delivering genuine value through your content and building topical authority in your space.
The sites I see succeeding long-term prioritize solving user problems and providing expert information over chasing the latest technical metrics. Keep performance healthy, but don’t lose sight of what truly drives sustainable SEO success - being the best answer to your audience’s questions.