Why it matters for a small business site
They describe what visitors actually experience: how soon the main content appears, how quickly the page reacts to a tap, and whether things move under their finger. Google uses them as part of its page experience signals, and a slow, jumpy page loses impatient visitors wherever it ranks.
How to check yours
- Run your address through PageSpeed Insights. The top section shows data from real Chrome users when your site has enough traffic; the score below it is a lab simulation.
- In Google Search Console, the Core Web Vitals report groups your pages into Good, Needs improvement and Poor.
- Look at phones and desktops separately. They’re measured and reported apart.
What good looks like
Google’s “good” thresholds, met by at least 75% of visits: LCP within 2.5 seconds, INP within 200 milliseconds, and CLS of 0.1 or less.
Common mistakes
- Chasing a perfect lab score while data from real visitors says something different.
- A huge, uncompressed hero image, which is often the element LCP is timed on.
- Images, adverts or cookie banners with no space reserved for them, which push content down as they load (CLS).
- Piles of third-party scripts (chat widgets, trackers) that keep the page busy when someone taps (INP).