Core Web Vitals: The Hype Train and the Skeptics
Katie Sylor-Miller offers a measured take on Core Web Vitals, balancing enthusiasm with caution. She's not convinced that Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) are the right targets for every site. Her worry is that baking these metrics into SEO scoring will push developers to chase three numbers without grasping what they do—and crucially, what they don't cover.
She backs Core Web Vitals for aligning with real user experiences, but there's more to the picture. If teams fixate solely on these signals—driven now by a very strong incentive—they risk overlooking other valuable analytics that might tie more directly to business goals. The official timeline from Google notes that SEO impact won't kick in until May 2021.
There's also the acronym problem. Jeremy calls out the growing pile of initialisms: LCP, FID, CLS, plus TTFB and SI, often used across PLPs, PDPs, and SRPs. It's a lot of letters to parse.
Personally, my beef with core web vitals is that they introduce even more unnecessary initialisms.
Despite the quibbles, there's room to call Core Web Vitals a step forward for web analytics. The author admits to riding the hype train a bit, but appreciates the push toward better measurement—Sentry, for instance, could handle the tracking.
