Google announced a new metric will be added to their Core Web Vitals report in March 2024.
The new metric, Interaction to Next Paint (INP), is set to help Google get a more accurate interpretation of the user experience, and in turn reward well performing sites with better rankings.
INP is currently a pending addition to Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report, and it will replace First Input Delay (FID).
In their announcement, Google stated: “Starting today, INP is no longer experimental and will instead be considered a pending Core Web Vital metric. This is a new designation to indicate that INP has proven its readiness to replace FID—but we’re not making the change just yet.
“To give the ecosystem time to adjust, INP will officially become a stable Core Web Vital metric in March 2024.”
What does this mean for search?
Google spent years trying to make use of site speed as a ranking factor with limited success. However, since the changeover from measuring load times, to reporting on Core Web Vitals in Search Console, sites that work hard to optimise their load times with a focus on interactivity have seen huge gains.
The introduction of a new metric is just the next exciting development in Google’s understanding of site speed and how it impacts the end user. It means that those who work on improving their site in this area will see further gains when Google fully rolls out the change in 2024. Meanwhile, those who don’t make improvements will likely see a fall in search visibility. Failing to optimise for the Core Web Vitals is one of the most common gaps we see in enterprise SEO strategy at the current time.
What is INP?
In short, INP measures the broad responsiveness of a page. This Core Web Vital also takes into account the time it takes for a page to respond to user interactions throughout its lifecycle, giving a much better understanding of how the end user interacts with a webpage.
INP will be reported in Search Console alongside the other Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). INP replaces First Input Delay (FID) due to FID’s limitations.
All together, these give Google a much better sense of the user experience when loading your site, and most importantly, scoring well in each of these areas will give you a rankings boost.
When will FID be retired?
FID will officially be replaced when INP is integrated fully into the Core Web Vitals report. FID measures the time it takes for the browser to process the first user interaction, such as clicks and scrolls.
FID gives a good approximation of the time the end user has to wait between clicking on a search result and being able to interact with your site.
However, FID has been widely deemed as incomplete.
This is because FID only measures the delay and cannot account for the overall time required for the website to allow for a meaningful user interaction (such as a form submit).
This has meant that some sites that didn’t provide a good user experience may currently be benefitting from an undeserved ranking boost.
How is INP better than FID?
The key innovation of INP lies in its ability to provide a more accurate measure of the time it takes for the entire page to become responsive. It considers visual feedback as a crucial aspect of responsiveness, providing cues to the user that interactions are being processed.
INP scores are measured in milliseconds, with scores under 200 milliseconds indicating good responsiveness, scores between 200 and 500 milliseconds falling within the grey area where improvement is needed, and scores above 500 milliseconds representing poor responsiveness.
| Poor | Needs Improvement | Good |
| >=500ms | 201-499ms | <=200ms |
Make sure your site is INP ready
For publishers, developers, and SEOs already focusing on optimizing website performance, the next year before NIP’s introduction should see you spend some time addressing issues in this space ahead of the roll out.
Luckily, the PageSpeed Insights tool has already been updated to allow you to test and measure your changes to factors like slow-loading scripts, delayed resource fetching, and parsing of CSS and HTML.
We advise E-commerce sites to assess critical functionalities for users to begin shopping, eliminate unnecessary scripts, and identify non-essential features that won’t be missed by shoppers if removed.
Spending some time improving INP now will yield positive results at the point of roll out in 2024.
It’s important to note that while INP is currently designated as a pending Core Web Vital metric, it will officially become a core web vitals metric in May 2024, after one year of being in a pending state. This gives site managers plenty of time to prepare.
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