In one of the latest Google Search Central Office Hours Hangouts, a webmaster asked John Mueller about the upcoming update schedule. They were curious if Core Web Vitals will be updated every 28 days, or in real-time?
Publishers who make significant website changes to improve their Core Web Vitals are typically excited to see their results. This is true regardless of how big or small the ranking factor is.
I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s uh…decided completely yet.
Part of that is also there’s just a general lag for the data anyway.
We kind of have to wait that period of time until we have collected enough data.
I suspect it’s not something that will be optimized for speed, or speedy updates, but more kind of, to have a clear understanding of the overall picture.
My guess is it’ll be more something of a slow thing rather than a real time change.
In the discussion above, Mueller is referring to what’s called CrUX data, or Chrome User Experience Data, which is generated by users who have opted to share their Core Web Vitals data with Google.
For extensions like Lighthouse and other applications such as Google’s Page Speed Insights, Google uses CrUX data with each update to measure how the website is performing. This is how Google measures Core Web Vitals.
As it stands, Core Web Vitals data is updated every 28 days.
Any site scores shown within Page Speed Insights or Google Search Console are essentially a comparison of your site against other users, using the data that Google has measured within the past 28 days.
Why Do Core Web Vitals Matter?
It’s our opinion that the upcoming page experience update will end up being very impactful.
While we believe that page speed and Core Web Vitals metrics will be critical for this update, we don’t think that you have to gut your entire website to succeed (unless it’s really terrible).
That being said, the question regarding publishing frequency will have an impact on how and when improvements should be made.
It’s important to note that there are some updates that are now real-time, meaning that they are not pushed out manually.
These algorithms are Panda and Penguin.
Other updates like Core Updates are updates pushed out on a wide scale and target overall issues with a website’s quality.
This difference is critical when you are updating a site and need to know if there is a waiting period before you’ll see results..
With Core Updates, you can’t immediately see results overnight.
Publishers tend to wait for some time to see their results to gauge exactly how effective their SEO changes were.
Although the update schedule may have changed, this has been true since the dawn of SEO.
Get Your Core Web Vitals Ducks in a Row for the Page Experience Update!
Given all the information above, it’s important to get your ducks in a row for the page experience update.
You don’t want one of your metrics to be out of whack when it hits, whether it’s CLS, FCP, or LCP.
Be sure to reference Google’s guide to page speed if you need more information. Also, don’t forget to check out our article on the Page Experience Update as well.
We also havee in-depth analysis of Google’s Page Experience and Core Web Vitals FAQs.
Watch the Hangouts Video
Image Credits
Featured Image: Shutterstock / Apr 2021
