Core Web Vitals and Raptive Ads

When it comes to your site, Google's Core Web Vitals — Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), are the key metrics being used to define user experience, rankings and SEO. Google's primary focus is on optimizing for Core Web Vitals (CWV), which is the area all Raptive creators should aim to pass.

(Results from PageSpeed Insights)

With Google’s Core Web vitals being a priority, it’s important to understand these key metrics and where Raptive ads fit into the equation.  

Largest Contenful Paint (LCP)

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), one of the three Core Web Vitals metrics, gauges how fast the main content of a webpage loads. To be precise, it measures the time from when you start loading the page until the largest image or text block is displayed within your view.  With this point in mind, it’s important to know that the Raptive ad code is already fully optimized for LCP.

Since several non-ad related factors can influence the LCP metric, it’s recommended to have your developer review the elements being flagged for LCP on your site. 

Often times, texts or lazy-loaded featured post images, loading above the fold, can get flagged for LCP in the PageSpeeed Insights (PSI) test results.  For example, the following PSI test result shows a lazy-loaded featured image impacting the LCP metric:

 

How to improve LCP:

  1. Work with your developer to make sure that the first image(s) or featured posts images aren't getting lazy loaded.
  2. Reach out to your host to see if they can find opportunities to optimize and improve your server response time.

Making sure to address these recommend areas can help improve the LCP metric significantly for your site. 

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures how quickly your site responds to user interaction (clicking a button, typing into a field and etc). For a fast and responsive website experience, the INP score should be 200 milliseconds or less.

Check this INP resource here to learn more about what we're doing to improve this metric along with some tips for creators.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is all about keeping elements on a webpage stable, ensuring they don't unexpectedly move around. Think about trying to click a button, and suddenly it shifts – not a great experience! CLS aims to measure a page's 'visual stability,' a key factor in user experience.

In some instances, ads can play a role in CLS, especially if an ad slot's container height doesn't load right away when the page loads. To prevent any surprise shifts from ads, it's important to make sure that Raptive scripts aren’t overly optimized.

If you’re using optimization tools like WP Rocket, we highly recommend excluding our Raptive scripts by addng the following exclusions in WP Rocket > File Optimization > JavaScript Files

  • adthrive
  • adthrive.min.js
  • ads.min.js 

 Be sure to copy the above exclusions and add them to each of the JavaScript optimization settings that you may have enabled: Minify JavaScript Files, Load JavaScript deferred, and Delay JavaScript execution:

Remember to save your changes after making these updates!

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