Google assesses your entire website as one whole. And one slow page drags everything down.

Wat is de kern en waarom Do they matter?

Core Web Vitals are three metrics that Google uses to determine how fast and user-friendly your website is. They are not vague guidelines or suggestions. They are hard figures that directly influence your position in search results. And since 2021, they have been counted more heavily.

The first metric is LCP, Largest Contentful Paint. This measures how quickly the largest visible element on your page loads. This could be an image, a video, or a large block of text. Google wants this to happen within 2.5 seconds. Anything above that is too slow. For the average visitor, it feels like the page is lagging, and they'll click away. To your competitor, who loads quickly.

The second is INP, Interaction to Next Paint. This replaced the old FID measurement in March 2024. INP looks at how quickly your website responds when someone clicks or taps on something. If you press a button and it takes longer than 200 milliseconds for something to change on the screen, then your INP is too high. Visitors perceive this as “sluggish”. They can't name it, but they do notice it. And they leave.

The third is CLS, Cumulative Layout Shift. This measures whether elements on your page unexpectedly shift while the page is loading. You know that moment when you want to read an article, you start scrolling, and then everything jumps up because a banner suddenly appears? That's CLS. Google wants this value to stay below 0.1. Anything above that is disruptive for visitors and costs you points.

Until March 2026, Google looked at these three values per individual page. Each page was assessed separately. Did you have a fast homepage but a slow contact page? Then only that contact page was penalised. The rest of your site wasn't affected. That has now changed. Fundamentally changed.

What is composite CWV scoring and What changed in March 2026

In March 2026, Google implemented an update that completely changed the way Core Web Vitals are weighted. It's called composite CWV scoring, and the principle is simple but the consequences are significant: Google now assesses your website as a whole rather than per page.

What that means in practice is that the performance of all your pages is added up and averaged. Not a simple average, mind you, but a weighted calculation where the worst pages count more heavily than the best. Google calls this a “site level performance signal” and it works similarly to how they've been looking at HTTPS and mobile friendliness for a while now: it's a characteristic of your entire site, not of an individual page.

The reason Google gives is logical. Users experience a website as a whole. If your homepage loads quickly but your product pages are slow, then the overall user experience is mediocre. And Google wants to reflect the total experience in its search results, not a cherry-picked version where your homepage scores well while the rest lags behind.

For large websites with thousands of pages, this is manageable, as they have technical teams that monitor site-wide performance. But for SME websites, and there are hundreds of thousands of those in the Netherlands, this is a problem that almost no one is aware of. Because most entrepreneurs don't look at their Core Web Vitals at all. And if they do, they only check their homepage. Not that one blog post from three years ago with an uncompressed 4-megabyte image that drags your entire site's score down.

Why a slow page now your whole site is damaged

Imagine you own a restaurant. The entrance is beautiful, the food is good, the service is friendly. But the toilets are filthy. What will guests remember? The toilets. That's how composite CWV scoring works, too. You can have ten pages that score perfectly, but if three of them load dramatically slowly, that will drag your entire site down.

The reason this hits SMEs' websites so hard is that most sites have grown organically over years. You started with a homepage and a few service pages. Then blog posts were added, a portfolio, perhaps a knowledge base. Something was added each year, but nobody looked back at what was already there. That blog post from 2021 with the embedded YouTube video, three uncompressed photos, and a social media widget? It loads in 8 seconds. And it’s now dragging your homepage down with it.

The weighted average makes it extra painful. Google doesn't just look at the average of all your pages; the worst performers weigh more heavily in the calculation. This means that ten fast pages won't outweigh three slow ones. The three slow pages have a disproportionately large impact on your overall score. It's like getting a 9 for five subjects at school but a 2 for maths, and that 2 counts double in your average.

Concretely, you see this reflected in your search results. Pages that were previously in position 3 or 4 drop to position 7 or 8. Not because the content has become worse, but because the site-wide speed score has decreased. And your competitor who has cleaned up their entire site? They move up. Not with better content, but with a faster site.

How to find out if There's a problem with your site

Most entrepreneurs have no idea what their Core Web Vitals score is. That's fine, because until March 2026 it was per page and the impact was limited. But now that it's measured site-wide, you need to know. And it's easier to check than you might think.

The first place to look is Google Search Console. If you’ve already set it up (and you really should have), go to the “Core Web Vitals” report in the left-hand menu. There, you’ll immediately see how many of your site’s pages are rated as “good”, “needs improvement” or “poor”. Since the March update, you’ll also see a site-wide overview showing your composite score. If more than 20% of your pages are rated as “poor”, you have a problem that’s already affecting your rankings.

A second way is Google's PageSpeed Insights. Go to pagespeed.web.dev and enter your URL. You will then receive a report for that specific page. Don't just do this for your homepage. Check your contact page, your most visited blog posts, your service pages. It is often the pages you pay least attention to that have the worst score. That one old page with a 3000×2000 pixel stock photo you uploaded five years ago? That could be dragging your whole site down now.

If you use WordPress – and around 40% of all websites in the Netherlands run on WordPress – there is a third option. Install a plugin such as Google’s Site Kit. This links your Search Console data directly to your WordPress dashboard and shows you, on a page-by-page basis, which Core Web Vitals issues there are. That way, you don’t have to keep switching back and forth between tools.

Whatever you do, don't just check your homepage. That's the trap almost everyone falls into. Your homepage is probably your fastest page because it's had the most attention. It's the forgotten pages, the old blog posts, the outdated landing pages, that drag your composite score down.

What you need to do now: concrete steps

You now know what composite CWV scoring is and why it matters. The question is: what can you do about it? The good news is that most issues are relatively easy to resolve. You don’t need to be a developer, and you don’t need to rebuild your site. But you do need to take action, because doing nothing will only make things worse.

Step 1: Inventory your worst pages

Open Google Search Console and go to the Core Web Vitals report. Sort by “poor” and make a list of the pages that are scoring the worst. These are your priorities. Not your homepage, not your newest page, but the pages that are dropping the hardest. In many cases, these are old blog posts, portfolio items from years ago, or landing pages that were once created for a campaign and then never modified again.

Step 2: Edit the images

In 70% of cases, images are the main culprit. Uncompressed photos, images that are larger than necessary, and images without lazy loading. The solution is simple: compress every image to under 200KB, use the WebP format instead of JPG or PNG, and ensure images only load when they come into view. If you use WordPress, a plugin such as ShortPixel or Imagify will do this automatically for you.

Step 3: Tidy up your scripts

Every plugin, widget, tracker and chatbot on your site loads JavaScript. And every script slows down your page. Look critically at what you really need. That social media feed nobody looks at? Remove it. That chatbot that's used twice a week? Consider if it's worth the delay. Every script you remove makes your site faster, not a little, but measurably.

Step 4: Sort out your hosting

Cheap shared hosting was fine when page-by-page speed was the only factor. Now that site-wide speed counts, a slow server is a problem that affects all your pages. You don’t need to opt for an expensive dedicated server, but a decent managed WordPress hosting plan with caching and a CDN makes a world of difference. Consider providers such as Cloudways, Kinsta or WP Engine. The investment is 20 to 50 euros a month, and the impact on your Core Web Vitals is immediately measurable.

Step 5: Remove or improve old pages

This is the step most people skip, and it’s perhaps the most important one. Do you have pages that nobody visits anymore and that perform poorly? Remove them. Or redirect them to a relevant page that does perform well. Your site doesn’t need to keep every piece of content that’s ever been posted on it. Fewer pages with better scores is better than lots of pages, half of which are dragging down your overall score.

The most common speed demons on MKB websites

After conducting hundreds of website audits, we keep seeing the same problems crop up. They are rarely complex technical issues. It is almost always the same five things that cause site-wide speed issues.

Number one: uncompressed images. We’ve said it before, but it cannot be emphasised enough. Every week we come across websites where the homepage loads quickly, but somewhere on page 17 there’s a 6-megabyte photo that ruins the entire composite score. One photo. Six megabytes. Your whole site suffers as a result.

Number two: too many plugins. The average WordPress site has 25 to 30 plugins installed. Of those, perhaps 10 are actually necessary. The rest load scripts that slow down your pages without you even noticing. Every plugin you deactivate and remove makes your site a little bit faster, and all those little bits add up across the whole site.

Number three: no caching. Caching ensures that your server doesn’t have to rebuild the entire page from scratch every time someone visits. Without caching, your server has to do the same work for every visitor. With caching, you store the result and serve it straight away. The difference can amount to 3 or 4 seconds in loading time. On every page.

Number four: third-party scripts. Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, HotJar, Intercom, Google Tag Manager with twenty tags. Every third-party script is a request to a different server, which also has to load. And if that server is even slightly slow, your page will be slow too. Limit the number of third-party scripts to what you really need for your business operations.

Number five: embedded content. YouTube videos, Google Maps, Instagram feeds, Twitter timelines. Each embedded element loads a complete external application within your page. A single YouTube embed adds 1.5 seconds to your loading time on average. Instead, use a thumbnail with a play button that only loads the video when someone clicks on it. That saves an enormous amount.

Frequently Asked Questions about Core Web Vitals and Speed