In 2023, Google announced a change in the primary website performance metric from FID (First Input Delay) to INP (Interaction to Next Paint). The reason for this change is that Google believes FID has limitations and doesn’t fully measure how quickly a website responds to user interactions. Therefore, INP was chosen as a more effective metric. INP officially began being used in Core Web Vitals on March 12, 2024.

In this article, Relevant Audience will introduce you to what INP is, its importance, and how it impacts website development and SEO.

What is INP and How Does It Work?

Interaction to Next Paint or INP is a new Core Web Vital metric thatmeasures how quickly a webpage responds to user interactions. This metric can indicate the stability and quality of the user experience on your website.

INP measures the response time to all interactions on a website, unlike FID, which only measures the first interaction of each user.

What Does INP Measure?

INP measures the responsiveness of activities performed by users as follows:

However, moving the mouse or scrolling the screen up and down are not included in the INP calculation because they are not considered interactions. Conversely, scrolling a webpage using the Space Bar, Page Up, or Page Down may trigger activities on the website and be included in the INP calculation.

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How is INP Measured?

INP measures the response time to user interactions over three periods:

Input Delay: This is the time waiting for a Background Task to complete.
Processing Time: This is the time taken to process JavaScript commands.
Presentation time: This is the time between when the command processing is finished and the display or changes on the screen.

What INP Score is Considered Good?

To measure how well a webpage responds to users, milliseconds (ms) are used as the unit of measurement. INP values are divided into three categories:

An INP below or equal to 200 ms indicates a fast and good website response.
An INP greater than 200 ms but less than 500 ms indicates that the website may have some delays and should be improved.
An INP greater than 500 ms indicates a very poor website response.

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How Does INP Affect Websites and SEO?

This new metric, INP, will affect websites in many ways:

- User Experience: Website responsiveness affects user satisfaction. In digital marketing, user experience (UX) is an important factor that should not be overlooked.
- Search Ranking: If a website has good responsiveness and users are satisfied, it can help boost the website’s search ranking.
- Conversion Rate: Because if a website has a quick response, it creates user satisfaction and can increase the chances of conversion or performing any valuable activity on the website, such as subscribing, filling out an email, or making a purchase.

Bounce Rate: If INP is good and the website has a quick response, it will reduce the bounce rate, which means users leaving the website page without performing any activities.

Regarding SEO, strategies should be developed to keep pace with this metric. Since INP affects Google’s search ranking, a faster-responding website will create a better user experience, which will improve search rankings and positively impact overall SEO.

In conclusion, INP is a more efficient metric for measuring website responsiveness to user interactions. Understanding INP will help in developing websites to be more effective. If the INP value is not good, i.e., greater than 200 ms, the website should be improved to work smoothly to provide a good user experience. When the INP value is below 200 ms, it will create a good user experience, improve search rankings, increase activity rates on the website, and achieve the set goals.

SEO Services at Relevant Audience

Relevant Audience is a Digital Performance marketing Agency, SEO Agency and Digital agency providing comprehensive digital marketing services. Our main goal is to provide digital marketing services to businesses to reach target audiences looking for products or services at the right time, place, and device through various online channels. Our services cover Search Marketing, Social Media Ads, Search Ads, and SEO services (Search Engine Optimization), as well as Influencer Marketing, and we are also part of the Google Partners program.