Earlier this week, Google began sending email notices through the Google Search Console to site owners whose INP scores were not up to par. These notices had the subject line: “Core Web Vitals INP issues detected on your site.”
INP replacing FID. As a reminder, Google told us a couple of months ago that INP will replace FID in March 2024. Then, a few weeks ago, Google published a new report in Search Console to communicate INP scores to site owners, because can be prepared before March. Term 2024.
INP (Interaction to Next Paint) is a new metric that will replace FID (First Input Delay) as Core Web Vital in March 2024. “Until then, INP is not part of Core Web Vitals. Search Console reports data from INP to help you prepare,” Google explained.
Email notices. Now, Google is sending notices by email to site owners who have scores below the threshold for a good INP score. The emails indicate the domain of the site that has the problem, so if you have multiple sites verified in Search Console that have low INP scores, you may list multiple site URLs in the email.
Here is a sample email:
Worry and confusion. These emails are, as you might expect, causing concern, panic and confusion. If you’ve been on social media in the last couple of days, you’ll have seen countless posts from site owners freaking out about what to do to “fix” their Google issues. It pretty much all goes back to that email about INP scores.
Mordy Oberstein and Nati Elimelech put it right in this set of tweets.
I couldn’t agree more – this will get lost in translation and people will start to get nervous without knowing the real story.
Page performance is incredibly important, but I think it would be more measured to avoid the “hype train” that was the initial release of CWV https://t.co/qSUTDiPjPE
— Mordy Oberstein *mediocre at best* (@MordyOberstein) July 11, 2023
don’t worry First of all, nothing changes today, in fact you have several months to improve your INP score if you want to. Also, this is a score on all basic web vitals scores, which is a part of the Google Search page experience aspect. And page experience is also a small part of the overall search ranking algorithm. Keep in mind that relevance is the most important factor, not how big your INP score is.
As I said before in my previous coverage of this INP change, Google reiterated that Core Web Vitals does not guarantee a high ranking in Google Search, wrote Martin Splitt, Google Developer Relations Engineer.
“A great page experience involves more than just Core Web Vitals. Good statistics from the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console or third-party Core Web Vitals reports do not guarantee a good ranking,” according to Splitt.
A good on-page experience is part of Google’s overall core ranking system. Core Web Vitals, while it may not be a direct ranking signal, is a way to try to understand if you’re getting a good page experience.
However, Google uses other signals as part of its core ranking system to determine what makes a good page experience outside of Core Web Vitals.
“There are many aspects of the page experience, including some listed here this page” said Danny Sullivan, Google Search Link, on Search Engine Land. “While not all aspects can be directly used to inform ranking, they generally align with search ranking success and deserve attention.”
Why we care Of course, if you have the time and resources between now and March, you can ask your development team to work on improving your INP score. There are small technical changes that a solid developer can tackle in a short period of time to improve INP and other vital web essentials. But I wouldn’t panic or stress about this change, get there when you can, and more importantly, stay focused on delivering great, useful content to your users.
