This is just a friendly reminder that Google will replace First Input Delay (FID) with Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as a Core Web Vital metric tomorrow, Tuesday, March 12, 2024. This has nothing to do with the Google March 2024 Core update that is currently rolling out at the same time, but I am confident this will confuse SEOs even more since “core” is in the name of both of these changes.
This Core Web Vital metric change from FID to INP will have very little to no impact on your search rankings. I will say that again, this change will have almost zero impact on how your site ranks in search.
Here is the timeline of this change:
Google has been talking about this happening since early 2022, so it is a long time coming. Google told us the official date of March 12 a few months ago. More on INP can be found here and how to optimize for it can be found here.
There are reports in Search Console for INP – so check those out if you have not done so already. Last July Google did send out notices about INP issues through Search Console.
Just a reminder, fixing INP issues won’t make for visibility changes in Google Search. Just keep in mind, page experience is not a system, but rather a good page experience is part of the overall core ranking system. “Good stats within the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console or third-party Core Web Vitals reports don’t guarantee good rankings,” Splitt wrote.
Again, do not equate the Google core updates to a Google core web vital update – they are two different things. Core updates have a massive impact on site’s rankings, core web vitals have almost no impact on a site’s rankings. Core updates look at a site’s content and overall quality. Core web vitals look to see how fast and easy to load a webpage is.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Update: The day of, John Mueller of Google posted on LinkedIn about this update. He wrote, “it’s not going to make your site’s rankings jump up” – here is the full message:
Yes! Google Search does use Core Web Vitals for Search. However … it’s not worth over-focusing on tweaking the scores just for SEO. I know, it’s rare that you can measure something more or less objectively for SEO, but don’t let it get to your head. You don’t need to obsess over each fractional point there. Getting those last few percent can be a ton of work. If you want to spend that time to reach those last points, know that your site’s SEO generally won’t change because of that. A perfect score is a fun technical challenge, and you’ll learn something along the way, I know the feeling (I worked on mine too), but it’s not going to make your site’s rankings jump up.
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