{"id":28554,"date":"2024-11-14T15:30:51","date_gmt":"2024-11-14T14:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitizer.rs\/news-stories\/wordpress-5-9-can-increase-core-web-vitals-up-to-33\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T12:31:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T10:31:50","slug":"wordpress-5-9-can-increase-core-web-vitals-up-to-33","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitizer.rs\/en\/news-stories\/wordpress-5-9-can-increase-core-web-vitals-up-to-33\/","title":{"rendered":"WordPress 5.9 Can Increase Core Web Vitals Up to 33%"},"content":{"rendered":"
[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” css=”.vc_custom_1587386989437{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1627655096033{padding-top: 50px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}” font_family=”Open Sans”]WordPress<\/em> is without a doubt the most popular platform for creating websites<\/a><\/span> . WordPress<\/em> sites<\/a><\/span> gained their great popularity due to the relatively simple interface for managing content on them. The large community behind this platform also means constant support for the platform and constant work on improving and removing possible bugs. With the recent changes that Google<\/em> has introduced<\/a><\/span> to its search, the logical answer has been improvements that will adequately follow the resulting changes. The soon-to-be-released version of WordPress<\/em> 5.9 can improve Core Web Vitals<\/a><\/em><\/span> scores, which have become a new ranking factor, by up to 33%. <\/span><\/p>\n

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WordPress 5.9 and Core Web Vitals<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

A suggested update for WordPress<\/em> 5.9 may automatically improve the results of the Largest Contentful Paint<\/em> parameter. It has been shown that improved lazy loading<\/em> leads to vital improvements in the Core Web Vitals<\/em> metric called LCV ( Largest Contentful Paint).<\/em> Testing revealed that this change improved Core Web Vitals<\/em> performance metrics by an average of 7% to as much as 33%. <\/span>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1627653454078{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}” font_family=”Open Sans”]\n

What is lazy loading?<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Lazy loading<\/em> is a way to speed up the imaginary download of a site page by the browser by delaying the download of site elements, such as images and iframes, that are not currently needed. Using lazy loading<\/em> elements such as images that are not visible on the visitor’s screen can be delayed using an HTML attribute called the loading attribute<\/em> . <\/span><\/p>\n

Since an image is also an HTML element of a web page, this attribute modifies the image, telling the browser to delay its download. In this way, the browser is freed up to take over the more important elements of the page that are immediately visible to the site visitor. Thus, the site becomes faster and more interactive for the visitor. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Where does the problem lie?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

Largest Contentful Paint<\/em> measures how quickly images and other elements are loaded into a website visitor’s viewport (the screen the visitor sees). Ever since version 5.5, WordPress<\/em> has added a default lazy loading attribute to all images and iframes<\/em> . The problem here is that images at the top of the page, such as logos or featured images, need to be downloaded in order for the site page to become usable. WordPress<\/em> cannot reliably judge whether the image will appear above or below the screen, as this depends on the currently active theme. <\/span><\/p>\n

The reason is that all themes are coded differently, so the solution to this problem was put before the developers developing WordPress 5.9.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the current implementation of the default lazy loading<\/em> was not ideal, using it was a big improvement over not adding the loading attribute at all. A suggested solution by the WordPress<\/em> development team is to turn off adding the lazy loading<\/em> attribute to the first image or iframe<\/em> in the code. <\/span><\/p>\n

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We are working on a solution<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

This method was tested on 50 of the most popular WordPress<\/em> themes and it was concluded that adding this method to the first image or iframe<\/em> element provided an average improvement in LCP Core Web Vitals<\/em> scores of 7%. Then the procedure was repeated on the first two elements of the page. The performance improvement dropped by an average of 2%, which clearly shows that removing lazy loading<\/em> from multiple elements did not improve LCP for the better, on the contrary. <\/span>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1627653548986{padding-top: 50px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}” font_family=”Open Sans”]Since it has been shown that omitting the first two content images from lazy loading<\/em> results in worse metrics than just omitting the first one, it was concluded that tests with a larger number of images are not necessary.<\/p>\n

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The test results showed:<\/p>\n