Google’s John Mueller has confirmed that HTTP/3 does not directly impact core web vitals and therefore positive SEO.
For those of you not in the know – HTTP/3 is a new, third-generation HTTP standard and is the successor of HTTP/2. It basically makes the internet faster and the new protocol has already been adopted for quirt some time by companies such as Facebook and Google.
Does HTTP/3 Affect SEO?
Many early adopter companies also use the new protocol. This does have some benefits as making a server faster is never a bad thing to do, however, adopting HTTP/3 won’t have a direct impact on SEO – as confirmed this week by Google Search Advocate, John Mueller.
Mueller did suggest in 2021 that HTTP/3 could indirectly affect core web vitals by improving user experience but is now confident that isn’t the case.
The confirmation from Mueller was in response to the question ‘could the use of HTTP/3 improve SEO because it improves performance?’ which was one of the queries in November’s Google SEO office-hours. You can listen to the full episode below and catch the question and response at 05:20.
Here is what John says in the video:
“In terms of performance, I suspect the gains users see from using HTTP/3 would not be enough to significantly affect the core web vitals, which are the metrics that we use in the page experience ranking factor. While making a faster server is always a good idea, I doubt you’d see a direct connection with SEO only from using HTTP/3. Similar to how you’d be hard pressed to finding a direct connection to using a faster kind of RAM in your servers.”
So there you have it, HTTP/3 won’t directly affect SEO but speeding up or improving user experience is still never a bad idea.
