Your website is probably losing customers right now,
and you don't even know it.

Go to pagespeed.web.dev and type in your URL. The "field data" section at the top shows your real scores from Google's data... that's what actually matters for rankings. The "lab data" section below is a simulation and can look quite different from what real visitors experience. If there's no field data for your URL, it means your site doesn't have enough Chrome traffic for Google to have collected data yet, but you can still check the lab results as a rough guide.

Yes, but probably not in the way you'd expect. The direct ranking weight of Core Web Vitals is relatively small... content quality and relevance still matter far more. But there's an indirect effect that's much bigger. When your site is slow and visitors bounce back to Google to click on a competitor, Google's NavBoost system registers that as a negative signal against your site. So the ranking damage from a slow site comes mostly from user behavior, not from the score itself.

It's the plugin model. WordPress is designed to be extended with plugins, and most business sites run 20-30 of them. Each plugin adds its own code that loads on every page whether it's needed there or not. Stack that on top of a page builder like Elementor or Divi, and you end up with a lot of code competing for the browser's attention. Platforms like Shopify and Wix control the entire stack, so they can optimize things WordPress simply can't.

It'll help with loading speed, but it won't fix everything. Caching plugins are great at reducing server response time... they serve a pre-built version of your page instead of rebuilding it from scratch for every visitor. But they can't fix responsiveness issues because those depend on how much JavaScript your browser has to process after the page loads. And if you're running WooCommerce, your cart and checkout pages bypass the cache entirely because they need to be personalized. Caching is part of the solution, but it's rarely the whole thing.

Your visitors will feel the difference right away... pages load faster, buttons respond quicker, things stop jumping around. But Google's scores take longer to catch up because they're based on a 28-day rolling window of real user data. Depending on how much traffic your site gets, you'll typically see Google's numbers start moving within 10-14 days, with the full picture settling in around 28 days as the old data cycles out.

Yes, and mobile is where most sites struggle. Only 48% of websites pass Core Web Vitals on mobile versus 56% on desktop. Mobile devices have slower processors, less memory, and often run on cellular connections... so everything takes longer. Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means your mobile scores are what matter for rankings even when someone searches from a desktop. And for most sites, 60-70% of traffic comes from mobile, so that's where the revenue impact hits hardest.

Maybe, maybe not. PageSpeed Insights shows two different sets of results. The lab score (Lighthouse) is a simulation run under controlled conditions... it can look great even when real visitors are having a poor experience. What matters for Google rankings is the field data at the top of the report, which comes from actual Chrome users visiting your site over the past 28 days. I've seen sites with a Lighthouse score of 90+ that still fail Core Web Vitals in the field because real-world conditions on phones and slow connections are very different from a lab test.

It depends on how deep the problems go. I offer a free high-level audit that shows you what's failing and why... think of it as a health check that tells you whether you have a problem and how serious it is. If you want a detailed audit with specific, actionable recommendations you can hand off to your developer or webmaster, that's a paid engagement. The detailed audit is portable... it's yours to share with whoever maintains your site, whether that's me or someone else.

Yes, significantly. Ads are one of the biggest causes of layout shift problems because they often load after the rest of the page is already visible, pushing content around as they appear. If your ad placements aren't reserving the right amount of space before the ad loads, every late-loading ad counts as a layout shift that Google measures against you. News sites, media sites, and content-heavy WordPress sites running ad networks tend to get hit the hardest. The good news is that most ad-related CWV problems can be fixed by properly sizing ad containers and controlling when and how ads load... it's more about configuration than removing ads entirely.

Google's Core Web Vitals apply to every website regardless of platform. The principles are the same... fast server response, optimized images, minimal JavaScript, stable layouts. WordPress just happens to fail more often because of how its plugin ecosystem works. If your site runs on Shopify, Squarespace, or a custom platform, the measurement is identical and the same business impact applies... the fixes just look different depending on what you're working with.

You can, but in my experience it's rarely necessary and usually not worth the disruption. A rebuild takes months, costs significantly more, and introduces all new risks... you're essentially starting from zero with an unproven setup. Most performance problems can be fixed on the existing site with targeted changes. I've taken sites from PageSpeed scores in the 20s up to the 80s and 90s without rebuilding anything... just cleaning up what was already there.