Google’s John Mueller recently said that Chrome-based spam could hurt the website’s Core Web Vitals core.
Based on Google’s latest updates, the Core Web Vitals (CWV) scores are the among factors that the search engine uses to rank websites. Google uses the browsing data from Chrome browser users to create the Chrome User Experience Report. Additionally, the search engine giant explains that real users on Chrome can impact CWV scores.
However, many bots are chrome imitations. For instance, a Python-based web scraper can spoof Chrome to trick a website like a regular site visitor. Interestingly, these bots would not affect a website CWV score as they are not Chrome, but only scripts. Similarly, headless Chrome bots would not impact a website’s CWV score.
Mueller said that he is confident that Chrome User Experience Report filters out the “usual spam traffic”. The challenge is when a spammer sends out actual people on a slow internet connection to visit a site while Chrome browsers opt-in to the Page Experience Report. He has also offered to take the information back to Chrome to review it.
[5 minute read]
