Core Web Vitals Audit Workflow Recommended by Google

All over the world webmasters and online business owners are trying to figure out how to measure, optimise and report on the new metrics associated with Core Web Vitals. It has become a popular debate on social media, with developers having come up with their own unique ways of auditing Core Web Vitals and developing optimisation strategies accordingly.

Google itself has published its own recommended CWV audit workflow, with helpful advice to make the process as straightforward as possible.         

They have recommended an ‘ABC’ approach, referred to by Google as the ‘Web Vitals Loop’, which in practice plays at as follows:

• Approach A – Evaluate web health and identify pain points.
• Approach B – Debug and optimise underperforming pages.
• Approach C – Continuously monitor and develop.

Each of these approaches generally prompts a series of questions for the site owner to answer, while recommending tools to ensure a smooth and effective CWV audit.

Approach A (Evaluation and Identification)

During this stage of the process, developers are advised to consider the following:

• Have things got worse or better as of late?
• Does the performance of the site require attention?
• Which metrics, devices and pages should you prioritise?

Google sets out a series of tools that may prove helpful during this stage of the process, including the following:

• CrUX Dashboard
• Search Console
• PageSpeed Insights

Approach B (Debug and Optimise)

When moving on to the next stage of the audit, Google recommends asking the following questions:

• How should the pages picked out be optimised?
• Which quick and easy optimisations/fixes can we make first?
• Which fixes required will take more time, effort and planning?

Again, three tools in specific are recommended by Google, for assistance with this part of the audit process:

• Lighthouse
• Web Vitals Extension
• Chrome DevTools

Approach C (Monitor and Develop)

The third and final stage of the process is to continue monitoring the performance of the fixes and optimisation efforts you have implemented so far.  All with the goal of conducting further fixes and updates as necessary, as part of a cyclical process.

Google stated recently that within six months, the vast majority of tweaks and fixes to boost performance begin to deteriorate in effectiveness. This therefore means that keeping careful track of performance and making adjustments on a regular basis is essential.

The tools recommended by Google during this phase of the audit process are as follows:

• CrUX via BigQuery
• CrUX API
• PageSpeed Insights API
• Web-vitals.js
• Lighthouse-CI