Google at an AMA at I/O this week on the top of web vitals was asked about how the core web vitals impact your rankings in Google Search. In short, Google said that it is not the case where you need to have all three "good" scores to get any ranking boost and also that once you hit good, you don't need to try to score higher to rank even better.
The question and answer came up at the 36:20 mark into that AMA. The question was "is Page Experience a binary ranking factor? - only "good experience" pages can get a ranking boost or is there a graduation in how Page Experience signals affect rankings?"
Philip Walton from Google said it isn't really a binary thing, at least not fully.
John Mueller said "Once you have reached kind of that good threshold, then that for us is kind of like a pretty high bar, and you are kind of at that stable point. And at that point, like, micro optimizing things like extra milliseconds here and there, that's not going to do your site in ranking anything specific. It might have an effect on what users see and with that you might have other positive effects, but at least when it comes to search ranking, that's not going to be something where you are going to see improvement. If you are like five milliseconds faster than the next one."
So tweaking out more goodness from your good score won't help you more with rankings.
Then Philip Walton added that you don't have to get good scores for all three core web vitals to see a ranking boost. He said "and definitely a point that I want to clarify as I have heard some people, there has been some confusion about this. It is not the case that unless you reach the good threshold for all of the Core Web Vitals metrics, that you have to reach the threshold to get a ranking boost. That's not the case."
He added "In fact, it's kind of the opposite. You will get a ranking boost for reaching the good threshold for all pages but beyond that point, you don't get additional boost for reaching it even better. Like if you have your LCP at two seconds and you get it down to one second, we have publicly stated that that will not increase your ranking. However, if you have a slow page, you improve to ten seconds, that could potentially boost your ranking."
There may have been confusion around passing all three requirements here and I guess that is not the case.
Here is how Glenn Gabe summed it up:
AMA for Web Vitals - With the Page Experience Signal, you don't have to reach the "good" threshold for all 3 metrics to get a boost in rankings. And you shouldn't micro-optimize after reaching "good". It won't benefit you rankings-wise https://t.co/V1JgkmTiAP @johnmu @anniesullie pic.twitter.com/twTYJSifJk
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 19, 2021
And John *reiterated* that quality/relevance will play a strong role in rankings w/the Page Experience Signal. If you're faster by a little bit, but your content isn't as strong, you won't suddenly start outranking other, more relevant content. https://t.co/V1JgkmTiAP
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 19, 2021
Here is the embed where the four talk about this:
Forum discussion at Twitter.
