Chrome Adds Experimental Soft Navigation Core Web Vitals to CrUX, With Search Console Switch Aimed for 2027

Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, 15 October 2026.

Chrome has started publishing experimental versions of all three Core Web Vitals that count soft navigations, the in-app page changes used by single-page applications (SPAs). The metrics went into the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) with its October 2026 release, according to a web.dev post by Chrome's Annie Sullivan published on 13 October 2026. Google's stable Core Web Vitals scores do not change for now, and Chrome says it aims to take the new metrics out of experimental status in May 2027, after which Search Console will switch to the new data.

What changed

Until now, CrUX recorded only the first "hard" page load when a user arrived on an SPA. Every later view the user opened inside the app was ignored as a separate load, and all interactions and layout shifts from the whole session were credited to the landing page. The new data follows the launch of the Soft Navigations web platform API in Chrome 151.

Three new experimental fields now sit beside the stable metrics:

• experimental_largest_contentful_paint_with_softnavs: Largest Contentful Paint measured across hard and soft navigations.
• experimental_interaction_to_next_paint_with_softnavs: Interaction to Next Paint split by individual soft navigation instead of being charged to the first page load.
• experimental_cumulative_layout_shift_with_softnavs: Cumulative Layout Shift split by individual view and URL.

In the CrUX API, data for each soft navigation is reported under the URL the user moved to, not the landing page, as long as that URL meets the usual eligibility rules. Chrome says it expects to add experimental soft navigation data for navigation types and First Contentful Paint in the November CrUX release.

Key figures from Chrome's data

Chrome's post gives a breakdown of how many sites the change touches. Most of the web will see little or no difference, but the picture is very different among the largest sites.

Measure	Android	Desktop
All CrUX origins with fewer than 5% soft navigations	66% to 75% across platforms (about 70% overall, per Chrome)
All CrUX origins where more than 50% of page views are soft navigations	7.0%	10.6%
Top 1,000 sites where more than 50% of page views are soft navigations	35%	42%
"Good" LCP for origins with 75% to 100% soft navigations, stable vs experimental metric	26% to 87%	Not stated

For SPA-heavy sites, Chrome expects each metric to improve or hold steady:

• LCP should improve when users click through many views, because follow-up soft navigations reuse code and files already downloaded. Chrome stresses this does not mean SPAs are faster than multi-page sites; follow-up clicks are faster on any site.
• INP should improve because it is now measured per page view rather than taking the slowest interaction from a whole session. Chrome says this roughly doubles the Android pass rate for sites with mostly soft navigations, though SPA-heavy sites still trail multi-page sites on "good" INP.
• CLS should improve because layout shifts are split into individual views. Chrome says this brings SPA-heavy sites in line with multi-page sites on desktop and close to them on Android.

Context

Chrome describes SPAs as a long-standing gap in the Core Web Vitals programme: because each framework handles in-app navigation differently, site owners have had to build their own measurement, and results could not be compared across sites. The experimental label is deliberate. Chrome says it wants feedback through the soft navigations specification repository and warns that numbers may shift from month to month as measurement is refined.

The important date for SEO teams is the planned graduation in May 2027, which Chrome says is subject to feedback. Chrome states that once the metrics graduate, Search Console will switch to the new data. Google has not said anything in the post about how, or whether, the change affects ranking.

What this means for SEO teams

• Check whether your site is affected. If your pages load as separate HTML documents (most blogs, news sites and standard multi-page sites), Chrome says you should not expect changes. Sites built as SPAs with many in-app clicks per visit are the ones whose numbers will move.
• Compare stable and experimental data now. The new fields are in the CrUX BigQuery dataset, the CrUX API and the CrUX History API. Chrome says CrUX Vis has been updated to show them for any URL or origin in the dataset.
• Use the per-URL view for debugging. Because soft navigation data is filed under the destination URL, SPA teams can now see which in-app routes have weak scores instead of a single blended landing page figure.
• Do not treat better INP as solved. Chrome notes that heavy main-thread JavaScript during route changes can still cause INP problems.
• Expect month-to-month movement. Treat experimental figures as directional until graduation, and annotate reports when you compare them with stable data.

Conclusion

For most sites the experimental CrUX metrics will look the same as today's Core Web Vitals. For SPA-heavy sites, which Chrome's data shows make up 35% to 42% of the top 1,000 sites, the change is likely to show better LCP, INP and CLS, and far more useful per-route data.

Nothing changes in Search Console yet. The date to plan around is May 2027, when Chrome aims to graduate the metrics and Search Console is set to adopt them.

Questions and answers

What are soft navigations?

Soft navigations are in-app page changes on single-page applications, where JavaScript updates the content and the URL without loading a new HTML document. Until now CrUX recorded only the first hard page load on such sites, according to Chrome's 13 October 2026 post.

Do the new metrics change my Core Web Vitals scores in Search Console?

Not yet. Chrome says stable Core Web Vitals scores remain unchanged while the experimental versions are evaluated. It aims to graduate them in May 2027, subject to feedback, after which Search Console will switch to the new data.

Where can I see the experimental soft navigation metrics?

They are in the CrUX BigQuery dataset, the CrUX API and the CrUX History API starting with the October 2026 release, and CrUX Vis has been updated to show them.

How many sites are affected?

Chrome says around 70% of CrUX origins have fewer than 5% soft navigations, and only 7.0% on Android and 10.6% on desktop use soft navigations for more than half of page views. Among the top 1,000 sites the figure is 35% on Android and 42% on desktop.

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