Google updated its page experience help documentation to clarify how Core Web Vitals metrics are used as a ranking signal. Google also made clear that other page experience signals are not directly utilized for ranking purposes in Google Search.

What Google wrote. The revised documentation appears in the ranking section and now states:

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.

Previously, it stated:

There are many aspects to page experience, including some listed on this page. While not all aspects may be directly used to inform ranking, they do generally align with success in search ranking and are worth attention.

You can see that Google is reiterating that Core Web Vitals are indeed part of the Google search ranking system. However, the addition—“trying to get a perfect score just for SEO reasons may not be the best use of your time”—suggests that this metric carries relatively little weight compared to other ranking factors.

Google further explained:

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.

Previously, it read:

We highly recommend site owners achieve good Core Web Vitals for success with Search and to ensure a great user experience generally. However, great page experience involves more than Core Web Vitals. Good stats within the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console or third-party Core Web Vitals reports don’t guarantee good rankings.

This confirms that other page experience indicators are not directly factored into Google's ranking algorithm—at least not in a direct way.

Core Web Vitals updated. As noted earlier, today marks the replacement of FID with the new INP metric as part of Core Web Vitals. Still, as mentioned above, these signals are very minor, and it might be more beneficial for you to prioritize other SEO strategies before focusing heavily on Core Web Vitals.

Why we care. Some months ago, Google clarified that the Google page experience was never a ranking system but rather a ranking signal, as noted this morning by Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison. These initial remarks led to confusion, prompting Google to clarify them in the updated documentation.

Additionally, John Mueller of Google posted on LinkedIn this morning about Core Web Vitals, stating, “it’s not going to make your site’s rankings jump up.”

Hat tip to Glenn Gabe for identifying this update and informing me of the changes.

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