What the heck is INP?

If you've been working in the web space for a while and you have been doing work around performance, you are probably aware of Google's Core Web Vitals. If not, these are the "page experience" metrics the search engine announced back in 2020 and started using as part of its rankings in 2021. Making sure you meet the thresholds for each metric is important as it can change the ranking of your page and affect your SEO.

As a quick recap, up until now, the three important metrics have been:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - the amount of time it takes for the largest piece of content on your page to load
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - the amount content moves about as your page loads; nobody likes it when a button moves as you go to click it and you accidentally click on something else!
• First Input Delay (FID) - how long it takes for your page to respond after the user interacts with it for the first time