Search Engine Journal posted an article about Google’s willingness to ‘forgive’ some missteps when it comes to core web vitals like loading speed in association with third-party apps. After all, sometimes slow speeds and other issues aren’t the publisher’s fault, but rather the plugin, theme, or third-party app. We’ll take a closer look at the problem and provide our own insight on the matter.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
Core Web Vitals: Will Google Give Breaks for Slow Plugins and Apps by Roger Montti
Published by Search Engine Journal, May 25, 2021.
“Google’s Martin Splitt answered a question about what to do about third party must-have functionalities in the form of apps and plugins and whether Google would give publishers a Core Web Vitals break since those apps were made by a third party.
Loren Baker asked a question that discussed the issue of publishers who need marketing and sales related functionalities on their sites that tend to slow down the web page and contribute to poor core web vitals scoring.
The example used was of a Shopify site incorporating email list, review and chatbox functionalities contributing to exceedingly bad core web vitals performance.
But the question applied equally to all third party apps, themes and plugins, regardless of platform, including WordPress.
This is an important question because the problem with publishers being judged on Core Web Vitals performance is that the performance issues do not generally rise through the fault of the publishers.
The fault for the poor performance lies with the makers of the apps, themes, and plugins.
So it feels like it’s not fair for Google to give a low score to a site for using a third party plugin or app that delivers a necessary functionality that users or the publishers need.”
