What is Interaction to Next Paint (INP)?

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is a Core Web Vitals metric that measures how responsive a web page is. INP records the delay between a user interaction, such as a click, a tap or a keystroke, and the next visible response on screen, across the entire visit. INP has been a stable Core Web Vital since March 2024, replacing the earlier First Input Delay (FID) metric. A good score is a delay of no more than 200 milliseconds at the 75th percentile of all page views.

INP answers a simple question from the visitor’s point of view: how quickly does the page react when I click or type something? A page can load in a flash and still feel sluggish if every click needs a noticeable pause. That perceived sluggishness is exactly what INP makes measurable, which is why it belongs in every technical Core Web Vitals optimization.

INP at a glance

What exactly is INP?

INP measures the full latency of an interaction, not just the moment the browser accepts the input. Every interaction runs through three phases, and INP adds them up to the complete delay until the next rendered frame (the “next paint”):

• Input delay: the time from the click until processing starts. If the main thread is busy with a long task, the input has to wait.
• Processing time: how long the matching event handler in your JavaScript needs to work out the response.
• Presentation delay: the time until the browser actually paints the result on screen.

Across the whole visit the browser collects every interaction and reports one representative value at the end, which on most pages is the slowest interaction. Clicks, taps and keystrokes count towards it; plain scrolling and hovering do not, because they do not have to trigger an immediate rendered response.

What is a good INP score?

A good INP score is no more than 200 milliseconds. Google rates INP, like all Core Web Vitals, at the 75th percentile: at least 75 percent of all page views have to stay within the threshold for the page to count as “good”. There are three rating bands:

• Good: 200 ms or faster. The page feels fluid and interactions seem immediate.
• Needs improvement: between 200 ms and 500 ms. Visitors notice a slight delay.
• Poor: over 500 ms. The page reacts noticeably slowly, which makes people leave sooner.

One point matters here: the 75th percentile approach means that a few slow interactions can tip the whole rating. It is not enough for the page to react quickly most of the time, the rarer and heavier interactions have to stay within the limit too. How fast the page loads is measured by Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) instead, and how stable the layout stays by Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

INP vs. FID: what changed?

INP replaced First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital because it reflects the responsiveness of a page far more completely. The difference comes down to three points:

• All interactions instead of only the first one: FID measured only the delay of the first interaction on a page. INP takes every interaction during the whole visit into account.
• Full latency instead of input delay only: FID captured just the input delay up to the start of processing. INP measures the complete chain up to the visible result, including processing and presentation.
• A more realistic picture: because FID looked at the first click only, and only at its beginning, many pages scored well on FID even though they felt sluggish later on. INP closes that gap.

INP officially became a stable Core Web Vital on March 12, 2024, and FID was removed from the Core Web Vitals in September 2024. In practice that means anyone who once optimized a page for a good FID score should check INP separately, because a good old FID value guarantees nothing about INP.

How is INP measured?

INP is measured primarily with field data from real users, but it can also be approximated in the lab. The two perspectives complement each other:

• Field data (authoritative): the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) collects anonymized INP values from real Chrome users. That data feeds into Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights. Only field data counts towards the official Core Web Vitals assessment.
• Lab data (for diagnosis): tools such as Lighthouse or the Chrome DevTools simulate interactions to pinpoint specific bottlenecks. Since nobody really clicks in the lab, the lab value is only an approximation.

A dependable assessment needs enough real traffic for CrUX data to exist. Without it, only lab diagnosis helps, or your own real user monitoring that records the INP values of your visitors directly in the browser.

How do you improve INP?

You improve INP mainly by taking load off the browser’s main thread, because blocking JavaScript is the most common cause of poor scores. The most effective levers:

1. Break up long tasks: split large JavaScript tasks into smaller chunks and yield the main thread in between, so that pending interactions do not have to wait.
2. Slim down event handlers: keep the work inside click and input handlers short. Expensive work that is not immediately visible can be deferred.
3. Reduce rendering work: a large or deeply nested DOM stretches the presentation phase. Lean markup shortens the path to the next paint.
4. Review third-party scripts: tracking, chat and advertising scripts often occupy the main thread unnoticed. Fewer third-party scripts, or ones loaded later, free up noticeable interactivity.

In practice, INP work is closely tied to the rest of the performance profile. A structured SEO audit shows which scripts and templates slow responsiveness down, and in which order the optimization pays off most.

Frequently asked questions about INP

Is INP a ranking factor?
As a Core Web Vital, INP is part of the page experience signal and therefore a ranking factor, although a comparatively weak one. Relevance and content quality weigh much more heavily. A good INP never hurts, but it does not replace a good page.

Why is my INP good in the lab but poor in the field?
Because nobody really clicks in the lab. Lab tools simulate single interactions, while real visitors work through complex forms, menus and filters. Only the field data from CrUX counts towards the assessment.

Does INP apply to mobile devices as well?
Yes, and it is especially critical there. Mobile processors are weaker, so blocking JavaScript hits harder. Google evaluates mobile and desktop values separately.

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is a form of advertising in which people with a large reach, also called opinion leaders, are brought into the promotion of a brand, a product or a service in order to raise its perceived value and its credibility.

The goal is content that pays off for both sides. The company raises its visibility, and the influencer receives products to test and can serve their audience with high-quality content. Because buyers put weight on the opinion of people who are independent of the company, many companies use influencer marketing to carry their brand message.

Who is an influencer?

Influencers are, for example, social media users with a high number of followers, bloggers, journalists, politicians, celebrities or subject-matter experts.

One important metric for choosing an influencer is the engagement rate, meaning the share of the audience that reacts to a post. It is often comparatively high for people with a comparatively small following (roughly 10,000 to 50,000 followers), because their opinion is perceived as more authentic and more credible.

Influencers usually position themselves around specific topics such as food, travel or fitness.

The three types of influencers

1. Brand lovers: they know the brand and have had positive experiences with it, so the bond to the brand is strong.
2. Brand critics: they know the brand as well, but they have had negative experiences and take a critical view of the company. Their opinion has a negative effect on the buying decisions of others.
3. Brand experts: they act as advisors to others. They have the expertise to judge the brand neutrally.

Benefits of influencer marketing

For the company, influencer marketing offers a few benefits over classic branded content.

The influencer usually handles the production of the content, so you only have to provide the product or the service and the influencer then reviews it and shares their experience. That is one reason why the authenticity of an influencer is high: the content does not come from the company and therefore often reads as more credible and more honest. Brands can also reach very specific target audiences this way. Young people in particular spend more and more time on social media, which makes it harder and harder to reach them with classic advertising.

Terms that connect to this one are collected in the SEO glossary.

What is an internal link?

An internal link is a hyperlink that points from one page of a website to another page on the same domain. Internal links tell search engines how the pages of a site relate to each other, pass authority between them, and help visitors move through the content. They are the one ranking factor you control completely, because no other website has to agree to them.

What are anchor links?

An anchor link is a special kind of internal link. It does not point to a whole page but to a specific section within one, which is why anchor links are also called jump links. To link to a particular element, that element needs a unique ID that appears only once on the page.

An anchor link to a heading looks like this:

<h2 id="anchor-links">Anchor links</h2>

And the link pointing to it looks like this:

https://taismo.de/en/what-is/internal-link/#anchor-links

Why internal links matter for SEO

Internal links matter for SEO for two reasons. Google’s crawler follows every link it finds, unless the link carries a nofollow attribute. When many pages of a site point to one particular page, Google reads that as a signal of importance and ranks that page higher.

Internal links also distribute authority. A page that earns backlinks passes part of that value on through its internal links, which is how a strong article lifts the money page it points to.

Internal links vs. external links

External links point to pages outside your own domain. Internal links stay within your own site. Both count, but only internal links are fully under your control: You decide which page receives them, how many, and with which anchor text. Browse the full SEO glossary for the terms that connect to this one. Internal linking is one of the levers we keep working on as part of our SEO services.

What are impressions in online marketing?

An impression, also known as an ad view, is a key term in online marketing and counts how often an ad or a piece of content is shown to a user on a website or in an app.

Impressions measure the visibility of an advertising campaign or of a piece of content, and they are an important indicator of the reach of a campaign. It is important to understand that impressions are not the same as a user actually interacting with the ad. They only count how often an ad was exposed to users.

Examples of impressions

Impressions can occur in different formats and across a range of platforms. Some examples:

• Display ads on websites: every time a banner or a sidebar ad appears on a website, that counts as one impression.
• Search advertising (SEA): the number of times an ad is shown in the search results of Google or Bing.
• Social media posts and ads: on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, an impression is counted every time a post or an ad appears in the feed of a user.
• Video ads: on platforms such as YouTube, a video ad that appears before or during a video counts as an impression.

When are impressions counted?

Impressions are counted as soon as the ad or the content is shown to the user. There are specific criteria that have to be met before an impression counts as valid, and those criteria can vary by platform and ad format. In general, the following guidelines apply:

• Ad load: the ad has to load successfully on the page or in the app. Ads that load only in part, or that stay invisible because of technical problems, do not count as impressions.
• Viewability: some platforms require a certain percentage of the ad to stay in the visible area of the screen for a certain time before it counts as an impression.
• Repeat views: repeated ad views by the same user can be handled differently depending on the platform and the campaign settings. Some systems identify and count repeated views separately.

(Source: Google Ads Help: impressions explained → https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6320?hl=en)