How to measure Core Web Vitals in 2026
Three numbers Google and Yandex actually care about. How to measure them on your site without a fancy dashboard.
Three numbers Google ranks you on. Yandex started using similar metrics in 2025. If you ignore them, you lose.
The targets:
- LCP ≤ 2.5s — Largest Contentful Paint. How fast the biggest visual element appears.
- INP ≤ 200ms — Interaction to Next Paint. How fast the page responds to clicks. Replaced FID in 2024.
- CLS ≤ 0.1 — Cumulative Layout Shift. How much things jump around as the page loads.
How to measure right now:
- Chrome DevTools — Lighthouse tab. Run, see numbers.
- PageSpeed Insights (web.dev/measure) — Google's own tool, free.
- Search Console "Core Web Vitals" report — real user data from Chrome.
If any metric is in the red zone, that's where to start. Easy wins are usually images and lazy-loading.