Mobile Core Web Vitals reality 2025: only 48% of mobile sites and 43.44% of WordPress mobile origins pass; INP replaced FID March 12 2024; Dec 2025 Google core update increased page-experience weight; 53% of mobile visits abandoned if site takes >3 seconds (Google/DoubleClick 2016); 58% of Google searches now zero-click

Mobile CWV pass rates — the structural baseline

Claim: Per the HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2025 (using July 2025 CrUX):

• 48% of mobile sites pass all three Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS)
• 56% of desktop sites pass
• Year-over-year mobile pass rate: 36% (2023) → 44% (2024) → 48% (2025)

Source: almanac.httparchive.org/en/2025/performance. Confidence: Verified.

WordPress specifically:

• 43.44% of WordPress mobile origins pass CWV as of June 2025 per the CrUX Technology Report (summarized by Search Engine Journal); updated late-2025 data has it at ~45–46% (HostingStep; Ben Ryan)
• Failure mode is NOT INP (85.9% pass rate) but LCP and TTFB — only ~32% of WordPress sites have good TTFB, driven by shared hosting (CoreDash analysis; SEJ)

Confidence: Verified.

INP became the responsiveness Core Web Vital on March 12, 2024

Source: web.dev. Confidence: Verified.

Google's December 2025 core update increased the weight of page-experience signals beyond their previous tie-breaker role.

Source: Ben Ryan / Search Engine Journal coverage. Confidence: Industry-consensus.

The 53% mobile-abandonment threshold — still canonical

The canonical source is Google/DoubleClick's "The Need for Mobile Speed" (September 2016, Think with Google):

• n=3,700 aggregated Google Analytics samples, March 2016
• "53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load"

Sources: Think with Google; restated in Google AdSense Help. Confidence: Verified.

The 2016 study remains the single most-cited number on mobile abandonment because nothing comparably-sized has replaced it. Treat as Verified for the 3-second threshold; the underlying user behaviour has likely intensified, not weakened, in the intervening decade.

Zero-click reality

58% of Google searches result in zero clicks to external websites, per SparkToro research. WSI's 2025 AI-era visibility report restates:

"Zero-click searches now account for nearly 60% of Google activity, signalling a tectonic shift in how people engage with search results."

Sources: SparkToro; WSI 2025. Confidence: Verified.

Why this matters for Candid use — the contractor-specific implication

Most contractor websites are WordPress (W3Techs has WordPress at ~43.4% of all websites). Most contractor sites use heavy page builders (Elementor, Divi, WPBakery) on shared hosting. The statistical baseline is that more than half of contractor sites fail Google's mobile CWV as of mid-2025.

Combined with the 4-touch buyer journey at Multi-touch buyer journey for residential construction / major renovation: 4-touch sequence (discovery → validation → verification → contact); the contractor's own website is the 2nd or 3rd surface, not the 1st, this means:

A buyer who finds a contractor on HomeStars, then Google-searches the contractor's name on mobile, and clicks through to the contractor's site, has a statistically meaningful chance of abandoning before the site finishes loading.

The HomeStars lead is wasted at the contractor's own front door.

Caveat — field-sample audit not yet conducted

A field sample of 25 Ontario GC websites is a research item Candid Creative should run before publishing a consumer-facing article. Placeholder estimate based on platform mix + CrUX baseline: 60–70% likely to fail CWV on mobile [Directional — derived from HTTP Archive 2025 WordPress pass rates, adjusted upward for builder-heavy construction vertical].

See Rule: a contractor's own website Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) is a LOAD-BEARING trust signal — it is the 2nd or 3rd surface in the buyer journey; >50% of WordPress contractor sites currently fail mobile CWV; the HomeStars lead is wasted at the contractor's own front door for the codified rule that follows.