Thread · 4 tweets · 8 Apr 2021

There's an interesting dynamic in Core Web Vitals that I haven't seen anyone comment on yet: if I understand it right, it incentivises having your content distributed through Google's properties instead of through direct relationship with your readers. 🧵

A page's performance is measured by looking at its CWV scoring across all its alternate representations (Web and AMP). A site's perf (which is used for pages that don't have enough data) in turn depends on page perf. So you get a boost the more of your pages load fast.

Important detail: (cached) AMP always wins because it gets its own cheat-boost in that its performance is measured preloaded/prerendered. Unless you can magically teleport your pages into the browser, they'll always be slower than cached AMP.

So the more you find ways to get your content read on Google's various properties that use AMP instead of on your own, the higher it'll rank. Or did I miss something? Funny how that works out.