Google Core Web Vitals to add Interaction to Next Paint on March 12

On March 12, 2024 Google will replace First Input Delay (FID) with Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as a Core Web Vitals metric. The news of INP replacing FID is not new, and we knew it was coming in March but now we have the specific date – March 12.

“Today, we’re announcing that INP will officially become a Core Web Vital and replace FID on March 12 of this year, and that FID will be deprecated in this transition,” Google posted today on its Web.dev blog. “It’s worth repeating that INP will officially become a Core Web Vital and replace FID on March 12 of this year. Another outcome of this is that FID will no longer be a Core Web Vital, and will be officially deprecated and removed from the program,” Google added.

What is Interaction to Next Paint? As a reminder, INP is a metric that uses data from the Event Timing API. It assesses the responsiveness of a webpage.

An interaction that causes a page to become unresponsive results in a poor user experience, Google said. INP observes the latency of all interactions a user has made with the page and reports a single value which all (or nearly all) interactions were below.

Google provided the following example of what poor versus good responsiveness looks like:

On the left, long tasks block the accordion from opening. This causes the user to click multiple times, thinking the experience is broken. When the main thread catches up, it processes the delayed inputs, resulting in the accordion opening and closing unexpectedly.

What is changing. Google will replace the FID metric with the INP metric as part of the Core Web Vitals on March, 12 2024. Google Search Console will include INP in the Core Web Vitals report later this year so you can start measuring your new INP scores.

When INP replaces FID in March, the Google Search Console report will stop showing FID metrics and use INP going forward.

Why we care. A lot of SEOs have focused a lot of time on Core Web Vitals and the FID score, for better or worse. Now those same SEOs will likely shift their focus from FID to INP. Here is a guide from Google on how to optimize for INP.

We had a while to prepare for this change, Google even added the new INP reports to Search Console mid-last year.

Overall, I still recommend you don’t get bogged down in these metrics. Even Google says they’re only one aspect to consider when looking to improve your site’s page experience.

You know, when browsing your website, whether it is responsive and fast. You don’t always need a third-party tool to tell you that. So make excellent sites for your users but don’t obsess about these scores.

So take a look at your INP score and see if there are quick improvements you may want to make, or not.