What are Core Web Vitals and do they matter?
Websites — answered straight, by an operator who builds these systems rather than an agency selling them.
Three measurements Google uses to score page experience: Largest Contentful Paint (how fast the main content appears), Interaction to Next Paint (how quickly the page responds to taps), and Cumulative Layout Shift (how much the layout jumps while loading). They are a real but modest ranking factor.
The longer version
Treat them as a tiebreaker rather than a strategy. Passing all three will not lift a page with no relevant content above one that answers the question; failing them badly will cost you against an otherwise equal competitor — and, more directly, cost you visitors who leave.
Layout shift is the one that quietly costs the most money. A phone visitor going to tap the call button, only for an image to load and push the button under their thumb, is a lost job. Reserve space for images and ads, and the number fixes itself.
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Other questions
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