The top performing websites are B2B, healthcare, and dictionaries/reference sites. This is not entirely surprising, given that dictionaries and health sites focus mainly on thin text content and less on large images or videos. This, along with their fast LCP times, is what helps these sites perform so well.
On the flip side, the worst-performing websites are fashion and travel sites — areas that tend to place a strong emphasis on images and videos. Besides Cork Used Bicycles Shop the poor load speed (LCP), mobile fashion and travel websites in the U.S. also need to improve their visual stability (CLS), where cumulative layout shifts can occur due to the dynamic content on these sites.
How will the Google update impact SERPs?
Are we going to see domains that are not passing Core Web Vitals plummet in the rankings after the rollout is complete in March?
Page experience has been a ranking factor for mobile SERPs in the U.S., since summer 2021. Yet it quite clearly didn’t result in massive changes in the search results. That said, the rollout was a soft launch spread over three months from June to August 2021. In the same period, however, the Google Core Update June/July 2021 did cause major disruptions in the SERPs.
Even Google themselves have stressed that the new page experience ranking factor will not have a significant impact on search results:
“While page experience is important, Google still seeks to rank pages with the best information overall, even if the page experience is subpar. Great page experience doesn’t override having great page content. However, in cases where there are many pages that may be similar in relevance, page experience can be much more important for visibility in Search.” — Google Developers Blog
In other words, the page experience and Core Web Vitals is a soft ranking factor that may mean a ranking boost, provided other factors, especially content relevance, remain unchanged. As with the majority of major updates announced by Google, it is not likely to have any huge effect and is presumably more about educating the market. A similar scenario was seen with Mobile First Index, Mobilegeddon and Speed Update.