Google’s Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure a website’s user experience, and their implementation as a ranking signal began in 2021. The newly introduced Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric measures how quickly a site responds to user interaction, specifically the elapsed time between the user’s input and the next refresh of the page. INP should be less than 200 milliseconds to rank better in Google, and it will become one of the three Core Web Vitals metrics in March 2024, replacing the current First Input Delay metric.

To optimize INP, website owners can reduce CPU processing times, since processing-heavy tasks on a website can slow down user interaction response times. Monitoring and measuring INP with a website speed test, tools like Chrome DevTools and Google Lighthouse, and DebugBear can help website owners identify and optimize website responsiveness. Google recommends that webmasters address core web vitals now to ensure their websites deliver the best user experience before changes roll out in 2024.