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Why Core Web Vitals
are unforgiving?

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Core Web Vitals are unforgiving

You can have a site that scores 100 on PageSpeed, but not pass Core Web Vitals. Using Daring Fireball as
an example, here is how it ranks:

There is always the possibility that even the most Optimized Page on your Site may fail the Core Web Vitals test if it was not designed specifically for Core Web Vitals. Unless your site is fully optimized, there is a chance that the Core Web Vitals will not be picked up by the search engines.

I was totally taken aback by this. This is a good LCP. CLS is perfect. Even so, a quarter-second FID (First
Input Delay) score is enough to cause an otherwise perfect page to fail. Quite impressive.

Unfortunately, how Google places you in that curve isn’t intuitive (unless you are a statistician):

  • The speed of the top 25th percentile sites is scored at 50
  • The speed of the top 8th percentile is scored at 90
  • Three-quarters of the web scores 50 or below. Only 1 in 12 sites scores 90 or better. And yet, 90 or better is what Google wants to see.

Some university instructors become infamous for “grading on a curve.” No matter how well the class does, only one student gets an A, only a few get a B, most will get Cs, and half the class will get a D or just fail. That’s the scenario we’re dealing with here.
In other words, If your site scored well last year, but hasn’t changed much, it might well score worse this year. Because the rest of the web is improving.