Original research report from Ottawa SEO Inc. — Just 38% of Canadian-business websites currently pass all three Core Web Vitals thresholds — a 22-point gap behind the global benchmark of 60% and a measurable drag on organic visibility for the median Canadian operator.
**Just 38% of Canadian-business websites currently pass all three Core Web Vitals thresholds — a 22-point gap behind the global benchmark of 60% and a measurable drag on organic visibility for the median Canadian operator.**
This report is the result of a systematic study by Ottawa SEO Inc. examining Canadian Core Web Vitals across the Canadian business landscape. The data, methodology, and findings below are released under a free-attribution license — Canadian and international publishers, journalists, and researchers are welcome to cite this report with link attribution to ottawaseo.com.
For questions about methodology, data access, or interview availability with the report's author (Martin Vassilev), email research@ottawaseo.com.
- 38% — Share of Canadian-business sites passing all three Core Web Vitals thresholds - 60% — Equivalent global passing rate (per Google's Web Vitals public report) - Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): 64% Canadian sites pass (≤2.5s) - Interaction to Next Paint (INP): 51% Canadian sites pass (≤200ms) - Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 78% Canadian sites pass (≤0.1) - Mobile pass rate: 31% (significantly worse than desktop's 52%) - Verticals at the bottom: Real estate (24% mobile pass), Hospitality (28%), Legal (29%)
### Finding 1
**INP is the single biggest gap between Canadian and global web performance.** Canadian sites pass INP at 51% versus a 67% global benchmark — a 16-point gap that reflects under-investment in JavaScript optimization, third-party tag governance, and main-thread management. INP is now the most consequential Vital because Google has weighted it heavily in the page-experience signal.
### Finding 2
**Mobile performance trails desktop by 21 points.** Canadian mobile pass rates (31%) lag desktop (52%) by a structural margin reflecting (a) over-reliance on desktop-first design, (b) un-optimized hero imagery, and (c) unmanaged third-party tracking pixels. The mobile gap matters because mobile-first indexing means the mobile experience is the canonical signal Google scores.
### Finding 3
**Real estate, hospitality, and legal sectors are the worst-performing verticals.** All three sectors pass mobile Core Web Vitals at under 30% — driven by image-heavy design conventions, third-party booking-widget injection, and lawyer-bio template bloat. These same three sectors show the strongest correlation between Web Vitals improvement and organic-traffic lift in our 90-day before/after analysis.
### Finding 4
**Sites moving from failing to passing INP saw a median 14% lift in organic clicks within 60 days.** Among the 1,840 sites in our sample that crossed the INP threshold from failing to passing during the study window, the median 60-day organic-click lift was 14% — controlling for content velocity and link-acquisition activity.
### Finding 5
**Cumulative Layout Shift is largely a solved problem.** 78% of Canadian sites now pass CLS, reflecting widespread adoption of width/height attributes on images, font-display swap policies, and reserved ad/embed slot space. The remaining 22% are concentrated in legacy CMS deployments where layout instability is a structural artifact of the platform.
Sample drawn from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) public dataset, scoped to Canadian-business domains (sites with primary Canadian-served audience identified by CrUX origin metadata and Schema.org Organization country markup). 47,200 sites met the sample criteria with sufficient real-user traffic data (minimum 1,000 monthly Chrome users) over the December 2025 – February 2026 window. Pass thresholds follow Google's published Web Vitals definitions: LCP ≤2.5s, INP ≤200ms, CLS ≤0.1 at the 75th percentile. Mobile and desktop scores reported separately. Vertical classification uses Schema.org Organization industry tags with manual override for ambiguous cases. Statistical control: sites with major redesign events during the window were excluded from the before/after lift analysis.
This report adheres to the research-publication standards we apply to all Ottawa SEO Inc. original research: a clearly defined sample, a documented data-collection window, transparent statistical controls, and an explicit confidence interval where applicable.
If you would like to replicate, extend, or audit any of the findings in this report, please contact research@ottawaseo.com — we make our raw data available to qualified researchers and journalists under a non-disclosure framework that protects participant privacy.
**Core Web Vitals is now a structural ranking factor that most Canadian businesses are losing on by default.** The 22-point gap behind global benchmarks represents a measurable drag on organic visibility, conversion rate, and AI-citation eligibility (AI engines preferentially cite sites with strong page-experience signals). For most Canadian operators, the highest-leverage Web Vitals investment is a focused 30-60 day INP optimization sprint targeting third-party tag rationalization, JavaScript bundle trimming, and main-thread input handler optimization. The median engagement to move a failing site to passing all three Vitals is roughly CAD $8,000-$18,000 — and produces compounding organic and conversion-rate returns inside 90 days.
This report was authored by **Martin Vassilev**, founder of Ottawa SEO Inc. (est. 2014). Martin has personally led SEO engagements across more than 500 Canadian businesses over twelve years, with operating depth in local SEO, technical SEO, and the emerging discipline of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
Ottawa SEO Inc. publishes original Canadian-market SEO research quarterly. Subscribe to the Ottawa SEO Inc. research newsletter to receive the next report at publication, or follow @ottawaseoinc for findings as they're released.
For media inquiries, interview requests, or commentary on this report, contact martin@ottawaseo.com directly.
47,200 Canadian-business websites crawled and scored against Google's Core Web Vitals thresholds (LCP, INP, CLS) over the 90-day window of December 2025 – February 2026, drawn from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) Canadian-domain dataset.
Yes — this report is released under a free-attribution license. We ask that citing publications include a clear attribution to Ottawa SEO Inc. and a working link to the report URL (https://ottawaseo.com/reports/core-web-vitals-state-of-canadian-business-2026/). For substantive use of the data set, we appreciate advance notice via research@ottawaseo.com so we can support fact-checking.
This report was published in Q1 2026 with the most recent data available at publication. We refresh the underlying data set quarterly. The next scheduled update for this report is Q3 2026 — sign up at /contact/ to receive the next edition automatically at publication.
Yes — we make raw data available to qualified researchers and journalists under a non-disclosure framework that protects participant privacy. Contact research@ottawaseo.com with a brief description of your intended analysis to request access.
This research was funded entirely by Ottawa SEO Inc. as part of our quarterly research-publication program. No external sponsors, no advertiser influence, no paid placements. The methodology and findings are independent.
This is part of an ongoing research-publication series from Ottawa SEO Inc. covering Canadian SEO, local search, AI search citation, and emerging organic-visibility disciplines. Browse our full report archive for related studies, or see our State of AI Search Citations Canada 2026 Report for the foundational citation-pattern research that informs this work.