Core Web Vitals: Chrome is changing how it measures speed — Oeuvria gets your site ready, here's why

What Chrome announced

• On October 13, 2026, the Chrome team published experimental versions of the three Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP and CLS) in the Chrome UX Report (CrUX), which also count "soft navigations".
• A soft navigation is a page change where the site updates the content and the address with JavaScript, without a full reload. Chrome defines it with three conditions: a user action, a visible address change and a visible paint.
• The official Core Web Vitals scores stay unchanged while the experimental versions are evaluated; they are available in CrUX (BigQuery, API, History API, CrUX Vis) since the October 2026 release.
• These measurements only come from Chrome and Edge 151 and later: Firefox and Safari don't support them.
• Chrome aims to graduate the metrics from experimental in May 2027, subject to feedback, and Search Console would then switch to the new data. That is a target, not a confirmed date.

Source: Annie Sullivan, Chrome team, "Experimental soft navigation metrics now available in CrUX", web.dev, October 13, 2026; Chrome documentation "Measuring soft navigations".

Who is really affected

Not most sites. According to Chrome, about 70% of sites have little or no soft-navigation traffic (under 5% of page views), and only 7.0% (Android) to 10.6% (desktop) have more than half. A site where every click reloads the page should expect no change.

For sites that mostly navigate without reloading, the effect is strong: Chrome says that for sites with 75 to 100% soft navigations on Android, the share of "good" LCP goes from 26% to 87%. According to Relevant Audience's analysis, this gain mostly comes from lighter follow-up pages now being counted: the first load itself is not any faster.

Chrome hasn't said whether Google Search's ranking systems will use this data (same analysis). So nothing allows us to announce an effect on your rankings.

What it means for a small business

In practice, nothing to change this week. Three points are still worth keeping in mind:

• Speed is judged in the field, on real visitors, not on a single lab test: for the official metrics, a result is "good" at the 75th percentile of visits with an LCP of 2.5 s or less, an INP of 200 ms or less and a CLS of 0.1 or less.
• If your site navigates without reloading, responsiveness during page changes (INP) becomes visible in the data; Chrome advises limiting heavy JavaScript during those transitions.
• To see where you stand, tools built on CrUX (PageSpeed Insights, Search Console, CrUX Vis) provide field data; the new experimental metrics can be read in CrUX Vis and the CrUX API.

Our best practices, and the service that handles them

What we apply, in practice:

• Fonts served from our own domain, with an adjusted fallback font, to limit layout shifts when text appears: that is the CLS lever.
• A baseline check in every audit: our free audit verifies server response time (it flags a slow site from 1.5 s), page compression and caching. It does not measure the Core Web Vitals themselves: for those, CrUX field data is the reference.
• Continuous tracking of Chrome and Google announcements, applied first to our own site, then to our clients'.
• A site built with Next.js, which can navigate between pages without a full reload: exactly the scenario Chrome now measures, so we follow this change closely.

Check your site for free

On the services side: our "SEO, GEO & AEO optimization" offer includes on-page and technical SEO optimizations as well as setting up performance tracking; "Websites + lead capture system" covers building, or redesigning, the site itself for service and construction trades.

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Why Oeuvria, and the next step

Because a fast site isn't the result of a test, it's a habit: we follow measurement changes as they ship and we apply them — no numeric promises, concrete checks. To find out where your site stands, start with the free audit, then let's talk.

FAQ

Does this change my Google rankings?

Not at this stage. The official scores and Search Console stay unchanged, and Chrome hasn't said whether Google Search will use this new data. Chrome's goal is to graduate the metrics from experimental in May 2027; that is not a confirmed date.

Is my small-business site affected?

Probably barely. About 70% of sites have little or no soft navigation. It mostly concerns sites that change the content and the address with JavaScript without reloading. If every click reloads the page, no change is expected.

What are the Core Web Vitals thresholds?

For the official metrics, a result is "good" with an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less, an INP of 200 milliseconds or less and a CLS of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of visits, on mobile and on desktop. Chrome's announcement doesn't give thresholds for the experimental versions.