Core Web Vitals are Google's standardized performance metrics that quantify user experience on your website. They consist of three specific measurements: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). LCP measures how long your main content takes to load—Google wants this under 2.5 seconds. INP replaced First Input Delay in 2024 and tracks how quickly your page responds to user interactions like clicks or taps, targeting under 200 milliseconds. CLS measures visual stability by penalizing unexpected layout shifts during page load, aiming for a score below 0.1. These metrics matter because Google explicitly uses them as ranking signals since the June 2021 Page Experience update. A site with poor Core Web Vitals won't necessarily tank in rankings if its content is strong, but when two pages are equally relevant, the faster one wins. More importantly, these metrics correlate directly with conversion rates—Amazon found every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales, and similar patterns hold across ecommerce and lead generation. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we see the biggest Core Web Vitals issues come from oversized images, render-blocking JavaScript, and third-party scripts like chat widgets or analytics tags. A typical WordPress site in our portfolio might start with an LCP of 4–6 seconds and a CLS of 0.3–0.5 before optimization. After image compression, lazy loading, and script deferral, we routinely get LCP under 2 seconds and CLS under 0.05. You can measure Core Web Vitals through Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, or Chrome DevTools. Search Console shows real user data from the Chrome User Experience Report, which is what Google actually uses for rankings. PageSpeed Insights shows both lab data and field data when available. Focus on fixing the field data first—that's what affects your rankings and what real visitors experience across Canadian networks that might be slower than your office connection.