Nicte

I have been trying to solve the problem of poor core web vitals for my SP sites for some time, looking at services that might help (that turned out not to be possible to implement (see this post) because of the structure of Squarespace - not having access to template code in 7.1).
Core Web Vitals to Become More Important in 2024
As this post describes (as do many others, On May 10, 2023, Google announced that INP will replace FID in the Core Web Vitals in March 2024. 
Whether we like it or not Google has put us on notice that CWV will matter in the future.
It's no longer good enough for SP support to reply with the suggestion we ''çheck our image sizes'' or imply that Googles CWV in Lighthouse are overly aggressive or sensitive or whatever. With 95% of search, it doesn't matter whether we like Google's method of assessing CWV.....what they say goes and platforms like SP need to get on top of their poor performance.
I think anyone on Squarespace with more than just a small hobby site needs to look very carefully at their site CWV and decide now whether to move to another platform, because moving takes time. I definitely want to have the matter resolved before March 2024.
For myself I am looking to move to Wordpress. Not only can I get high CWV but there are other bonuses, including many  tools that I can connect to a WP site (like writing/ content updating tools) that are just not possible with Squarespace.
It would be great to hear SP announce a commitment to improve the CWV metrics for their platform but I suspect we will hear nothing.
Interested to hear what others think - I realise we've all spent a lot of time and energy invested in SP so it's tempting to find excuses for them but I think it's time those of us who are thinking of moving speak up in the hope there might be some commitment to fix the significant problems in speed and performance that Squarespace has.

Hi Henry
Unfortunately Web Core Vitals are a big deal and no matter how good a job we do on-page, quality content etc, if the Core Web Vitals are poor Google is marking your site down right now - and will be even more so from next year.
I am totally understanding of those who have invested in the platform, either in terms of site content (as I have) or as developers of plugins, design services etc. It is indeed an awkward situation.
But the bottom line is that unless SP solves the terrible performance - particularly on mobile - customers are being placed at a significant disadvantage and their results in the SERPs is are being marked down.
To be very clear, Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor in the Google algo.
"Google's Core Web Vitals first became a ranking factor back in 2021. In February 2022, the change was fully rolled out to all mobile and desktop searches" according to Search Engine Land.
And here's what Google says: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/core-web-vitals
And no, it's not an issue for the 'top 5%'.
It's an issue for anyone who needs their website to appear on page one of Google results. The only folks it does not matter to might someone who is not interested in generating traffic from search engines. That could I guess be someone using a SP site for an internal company website, for example. But ewven then, if speed and performance on mobile is an issue then it might still be a problem.
The time for sugar-coating has to stop. Squarespace needs to do something.

Great post, @simon.stjohn; sadly, it's become obvious that SP has not improved performance, especially with the extremely poor mobile INP results resulting in a Core Web Vitals failing. I've optimised everything I can and still our traffic has been smashed to the point where I don't believe we can stay on this platform.
Everyone, including SP, has known about the March 2024 Core update for almost 12 months, so it's extremely disappointing that they have failed to improve performance or even bother to offer any advice to users. The lack of communication and zero transparency from SP are also very frustrating. It would be great to actually hear if they have any solutions or improvements under testing or in development. Else, people will be forced to leave the platform.

Hi @GlynMusica Thanks for your reply - and yes, its been going on for years and I can't understand why it has not been addressed. I have been with Squarespace for many years - I was one of the original clients in Australia, I suspect. With small projects it did not matter to me, but now I am building a travel website I just can't justify staying around when Core Web Vitals are so poor and are having an impact on my rankings.
Serious business websites can't justify investing staff, tools to research and produce content only to have the website itself penalised for poor performance. Squarespace can't even manage to integrate a simple process like image optimisation like https://shortpixel.com/, let alone address LCP and other core web vitals.
And I feel I am being more than fair just addressing the fundamental deficiency of CWV. I am not even mentioning the lack of other basic tools necessary to operate a content business link internal linking, SEO optimisation, etc.
I realise many will say I am wanting more from a tool that 'makes it so easy' for people to run a website. However, in today's competitive SEO landscape, unless you are a rare business that does not want to gain any traffic from search engines you are starting gagged, bound and jail-locked off the first page of the search results for competitive terms because its fairly certain your competitors will be outperforming you on CWV, even if you beat them on all the other metrics like content optimisation, content quality, etc.

Update 01-April-2024
Latest changes on dateformat plugin
- Update Blog item and Blog list item on Brine 7.0 template
- Update the mechanism of the date formatter using DOM attribute for faster initialization
Checkout latest version of date format here

@cavitee
 
Using commas to separate multiple sites did not work for me. However, this format worked:
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.0/jquery.min.js"></script> <script> $(document).ready(function() {     $('[href*="amazon.com"]').attr('rel','sponsored');     $('[href*="ebay.com"]').attr('rel','sponsored'); }); </script> I hope this is correct, @tuanphan!
 

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.0/jquery.min.js"></script> <script> $(document).ready(function() { $('[href*="beaverhero.com"]').attr('rel','nofollow'); }); </script> Notes: This code will target all links that contain the word "beaverhero.com" in the link.

Solution found! I finally figured out a way to make gallery slideshow blocks work much better than before. Here's the CSS that makes the difference; copy and paste this into your page code header (or site CSS page without the style tags):
<style> .sqs-gallery.sqs-gallery-design-stacked { height: 478px !important; max-height: 50vw !important; } .thumb-image.loaded { width: 100% !important; max-width: 956px !important; left: 0px !important; object-fit: contain !important; } </style> And of course you can play around with the values to suit your needs and specific situation. Hope this helps some people.
Found a quasi-solution using derrick's example. Navigation sidebar combined with summary blocks within a blog provides, for the most part, the functionality needed. Still hoping for a better solution though! Automatically-generating summary blocks right on the spot in response to user input, would be exquisite.

Sure. You don't just copy and paste the entire thing though. Put this in your site custom CSS page: 
.container { position: relative; width: 100%; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 56.25%; /* 16:9 Aspect Ratio */ } .responsive-iframe { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; bottom: 0; right: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: none; } And put this code into a code block on your site page where you want to put the video:
<div class="container"> <iframe class="responsive-iframe" src="VIDEO EMBED URL HERE"></iframe> </div> ofc you'll put the video embed url where it says to. I think it also works for items other than youtube videos but I'm not sure.

Squarespace actually puts the full blog post publication date on every blog page in a meta element with an itemprop='datePublished'. If you search for this item and get the content attribute, you can use this to inject into the published date element.
 
<script> //only run the code after the dom has loaded document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() { //get the blog post html item so that we can later replace this with the full published date var pubdate = document.getElementsByClassName("blog-meta-item--date"); //get the published info from the meta property on the page var datePublishedMeta = document.querySelector('meta[itemprop="datePublished"]'); for (var i = 0; i < pubdate.length; i++) { if (datePublishedMeta){ //turn the meta date into a Date item so we can restyle it var d = new Date(datePublishedMeta.getAttribute('content')); //Set the dateStyle. I prefer 'long' to display the full month like March instead of Mar pubdate[i].innerText = d.toLocaleString('default', {dateStyle: 'long'}); } } }); </script>