In November 2020, Google had confirmed in its blog that it will start rolling page experience signals in May 2021. However, later google confirmed that the rollout has been postponed to mid-June 2021, and now it started rolling down.
It also confirmed that 100% rollout of this page experience update will be completed by August 2021.
“We’ll begin using page experience as part of our ranking systems beginning in mid-June 2021. However, page experience won’t play its full role as part of those systems until the end of August. You can think of it as if you’re adding a flavoring to a food you’re preparing. Rather than add the flavor all at once into the mix, we’ll be slowly adding it all over this time period.”
So as a website owner is this that thing you to worry about?
In this article, we will understand what is Google page experience and Core Web Vitals is and how does this “page experience update” will impact your business website.
What is Page Experience?
Page experience is made with several metrics that measure how users perceive the experience of browsing or interacting with the web page.
It includes Core Web Vitals that measure real-world user experience considering some points as does web page load fast, is it mobile-friendly or SSL enabled on the website, presence of intensive ads, and does content jumps or moves to another section as page loads.
Page experience consists of existing ranking factors that include mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS & Intrusive Interstitial Guidelines.
What Are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are the speed metrics factors from Google Page Experience Signals that help it measure a webpage’s user experience.
The Core Web Vitals report is now available in the search console. Apart from viewing the report in the search console, it can be also viewed using the pageview insights.
The three most important aspects of user experience are:
- Loading (It means how quick web page loads on screen)
- Interactivity ( It means how quickly the page responds to the user input)
- Visual Stability (It means how stable is the content of the web page is)
Also, it includes three metrics to measure user experience:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): LCP reports the loading time of the largest content of the page from the viewport. This can be the image or text block. To provide a good user experience, LCP must be less than or equal to 2.5 seconds.
- First Input Delay (FID): FID measures the user’s first interaction with the webpage. It may click on the link or tap on the button. For good page experience sites must have an FID of 100 milliseconds or less.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): CLS measures the visual stability of a web page or how the content and elements change their position from one rendered position to the next.
Impact of The Google Page Experience Update
Google is continuously aimed at improving the mobile web experience. It got started with enabling HTTPS on websites to make online shopping safer and by introducing mobile-first indexing. It is clear that Google is more focused on mobile searches.
As with page experience update now Google is going to include non-AMP pages in news.google.com. Also along with an update, Google is going to remove AMP badges of AMP pages from the searches.
That means now onwards AMP pages will not hold that much value as they previously did. Also, non-AMP pages will be included in Google news so there will be a larger inclusion of websites under google news. Though it’s limited to those websites which are complying with Google News Guidelines.
So the question still remains unanswered that, what impact will it bring to my business website?
If you have created a website in past and didn’t pay attention to the UI/UX, security, and other web vitals including core web vitals then you may face a serious decline in website ranking. Eventually, you may lose your potential customers. Compiling with the Google page experience update 2021 will give your web presence a boost.
According to John Muller from Google, all 3 core web vitals criteria must be met to get a ranking boost on Google searches. Muller further said,
“My understanding is we see if it’s in the green and then that counts as it’s OK or not. So if it’s in yellow then that wouldn’t be in the green, but I don’t know what the final approach there will be.
There are a number of factors that come together and I think the general idea is if we can recognize that a page matches all of these criteria then we would like to use that appropriately in search ranking.
I don’t know what the approach would be where there are some things that are OK and some things that are not perfectly OK, like how that would balance out.”
How To Measure Core Web Vitals
There are several tools that will help you to measure and monitor core web vitals and improve the performance of your web page and site on SERPs. The tools for measuring and monitoring core web vitals are as follows:
- Chrome User Experience Report
- PageSpeed Insights
- Report in Search Console
- Web-vitals JavaScript library
- web.dev
- Web Vitals Extension
Page Experience Report in Google Search Console
Google recently included a new feature i.e. Page Experience Report in the search console. With the help of Page Experience Report, you can measure the performance of each and every URL of your website. It combines the metrics of core web vitals with other Google page experience signals.
Bottom Line
Google frequently makes changes to its algorithm. The changes are meant to help people find the information they need more quickly and to keep poor quality content at a bay. When developing and managing a new business website you must take care of certain things like:
- Think less about search engines but more about your website visitors.
- Create a piece of high-quality content that will engage your visitor that may convert them into your customer.
- Build a website that is easy to navigate.
- Perpetually monitor and track the performance of your website traffic and content so that you can fix the issue and get your traffic back on track as soon as you get any drop.
At Conduce Media, we have experts who can fix your current pages and/or build pages that comply with Google’s guidelines. If you are looking to rank your website on Google, do get in touch with one of our experts for a free one on one consultation.