Google Page Experience Update: Measure Core Web Vitals for Free with the Google CrUX Report

1. What is Google's Page Experience Update?
2. What is the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) about?
3. Measuring the Core Web Vitals with the CrUX-Report for free
4. The finished CLS Comparison

Many website operators and especially SEO managers are currently dealing with the Google Core Web Vitals, or CWV for short. The CWV are part of the already announced Page Experience Update, which Google rolled out from mid-June to the end of August 2021. We explain to you what the Core Web Vitals are and show you how you can measure them in a few steps for your own website with the CrUX Report from Google for free.

We also show you, using the example of Zalando, AboutYou, and Breuninger, how you can compare your Core Web Vitals with those of your competitors.

What is Google's Page Experience Update?

The Page Experience Update focuses, as the name suggests, on the user-friendliness of a website. To determine whether websites are user-friendly, Google measures three key elements:

• The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures the time from the start of the URL load until the largest text block or image element is rendered on the smartphone or desktop.
• The First Input Delay (FID) measures the time from the first interaction of a user with the URL, until the point at which the browser can actually react to this interaction.
• The Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the cumulative score of all unexpected layout shifts that occur between the start of the page load and the completion of the page load.

In this How-To we speak in detail only about the CLS. As a website operator, you should also engage with the other values and take measures.

What is the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) about?

Imagine you are browsing Google and searching for the latest Summer fashion trends 2021. You come across a fashion blog and start reading. Suddenly, the entire text block shifts and a previously not displayed advertising banner appears between the paragraphs. At this moment, the layout of the page has changed and you as a user need to reorient yourself. Your stress level may already rise a bit. You continue reading, and with every other paragraph, the layout of the page shifts. You cannot concentrate on the essential due to the constant layout shifts: the latest summer fashion trends. Annoyed, you leave the website.

As a website operator, you should therefore deal more closely with the Page Experience of your website, to which the layout shift belongs, and take measures to improve it. Only then you can provide the optimal user experience to your users and potential buyers of your products. This includes avoiding long loading times and layout shifts. To avoid these, you have to analyze and improve your website or online shop. SEO-Tools and data visualization software can assist you.

Measuring the Core Web Vitals with the CrUX-Report for free

A first port of call for the analysis is the CrUX-Report. With the CrUX-Report (CrUX stands for Chrome User Experience) you can get a good overview of the core web vitals over time. The Chrome browser collects the data for the metrics described above from all Chrome users and stores it in a large data pot every month. This means that both the Core Web Vitals of your own website and those of your competitors are collected, aggregated, and visualized. This means: You get information every month about how your own Core-Web-Vitals values, but also those of the competition, change. For this, you only need to take a few minutes and set up a CrUX dashboard in Google Data Studio.

Create CrUX-Dashboard

If you click on the following link, you will directly reach to the first step: https://g.co/chromeuxdash

The report should look like this when you have clicked on the link.

Then, in the first field “Enter origin URL” you can enter your own domain URL. In our example, we take zalando.de.

Very important: Click on the checkbox “Allow changes to “Enter origin URL” in reports”.

At the top right of the window, you see the blue button “Connect”. When you click on this button, you get a small pop-up window. Click on “Allow” and confirm.

After a few seconds, the connection is established and you get the following overview of dimensions. Click on “Create report” at the top right and again in the pop-up window on “Create report”.

You got it! Now you have the Data Studio CrUX Dashboard created and are directly in the edit mode.

At the top right, you can switch between the “View” mode and “Edit” mode. To look at the CLS value of zalando.de, switch to page 4 of the CrUX report. To do this, click on page 4 of 12 from the drop down menu at the top left.

To compare the CLS value of zalando.de with that of aboutyou.de, peek-und-cloppenburg.de and breuninger.com, you have to adjust the presentation of the report a bit. If you have worked with Google Data Studio more often, you can either increase the entire area of the report using the layout at the top right or drag the individual modules smaller with your mouse. As a Data Studio newbie, you can try one of the two variants and see which one you like better.

For this, now click on each individual area and store the corresponding domain name in the field “Parameters Enter origin URL”. The fields “Good CLS”, “P75 CLS (All Devices)” and “Poor CLS” also need to be selected individually and the corresponding domain name needs to be stored.

The finished CLS Comparison

About 15–20 min later, the CLS comparison is complete. In this example, the device “phone” was filtered explicitly, since the mobile display of aboutyou.de runs on a separate subdomain (m.aboutyou.de).

In comparison, you can see that the two online shops peek-und-cloppenburg.de and breuninger.com have actively optimized their CLS value in the last two months. The green value has been increasing slightly at first and then very strongly since April for both web shops.

Zalando.de itself has already a constant green CLS value, but also here there is optimization potential. compared to this, aboutyou.de has the worst CLS value and indeed has optimization potential.