Google Page Experience Update: User Experience is a SEO Ranking Signal on Mobile & Desktop

The Page Experience Update is a new Google search ranking change that evaluates the user experience of a website in determining SEO rankings. The page experience ranking change for desktop will begin rollout in February 2022 and complete by March 2022. The page experience update for mobile completed rolling out last year between June and August 2021.

This update includes page experience ranking signals that evaluate the user experience of a website on desktop and mobile devices to determine the SEO rankings for a web page.

What is Page Experience?

Page Experience is a set of signals that measure the user experience of interacting with a web page. This includes Core Web Vitals that measure loading performance, interactivity and visual stability. It also includes search signals like HTTPS security, mobile-friendliness (for mobile) and the use of intrusive interstitials.

What is the Page Experience Update?

The Page Experience Update from Google introduces a new search ranking signal that will be used by Google ranking algorithms starting August 2021 for mobile and March 2022 for desktop. Website pages that provide a good user experience to their visitors will receive favorable page experience rankings. This ranking signal will be used when determining SEO rankings.

The Page Experience update for mobile completed roll out on Google search last year between June 15, 2021 and August 31, 2021. The page experience update for desktop will begin rolling out between February and March 2022.

How will the Page Experience Update Affect SEO Rankings?

Once the Page Experience update is fully rolled out, Google’s systems will consider all existing search ranking factors in addition to page experience when ranking pages in Google search results pages (SERP). There are estimated to be over 200 search algorithms used by Google to rank web pages.

Good page content that provides information relevant to the users search is still an important factor to determine search rankings. Providing a good user experience to site visitors will be one more ranking factor used to determine rankings on Google search.

According to Google,
While page experience is important, Google will still rank pages based on the best overall content. In cases where there are many pages that have similar relevance, page experience will be important to determine search rankings.

What does the Page Experience Update include?

Page experience signals will be used to measure the user experience of a web page on mobile and desktop. These signals include:

1. Core Web Vitals

   The website page provides a good user experience. The core web vitals metrics are measured by loading time, interactivity and visual stability. The same three Core Web Vitals metrics will apply for both mobile and desktop.

   • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). This metric measures the page loading performance of the page. For a good user experience, the LCP or the largest content on the page should load within 2.5 seconds after the page first starts loading.
      
     

     Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

   • First Input Delay (FID). This measures the page interactivity and responsiveness from the time the user first clicks on a link or button to interact with the page. To provide a good user experience, the FID should be less than 100 milliseconds.
      
     

     First Input Delay

   • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). This measures the visual stability of the page. A web page should load without any unexpected movement of content. For a good user experience, the CLS should be less than 0.1.
      
     

     Cumulative Layout Shift

2. Mobile-friendliness

   The web page is mobile-friendly and easy to use on mobile devices. Mobile friendliness will not be a factor for desktop

3. HTTPS security

   The website is secure and uses HTTPS security protocols. This applies to both desktop and mobile.

4. No intrusive interstitials

   The web page content is easy to access by the user without intrusive interstitials. This could include pop-ups or stand-alone interstitials that cover the main content and make it harder to access the content. This applies to both desktop and mobile.

Note that if a site has separate mobile and desktop URLs, the desktop signals will be based on the desktop URLs.

Page experience signals on Mobile and desktop

As part of the Page Experience update, the following changes have also been added,

• The Top Stories carousel feature on Google search will now include all eligible news content. Using the AMP format will not be required for content to be included in the Top News carousel.
• The Google News app and news.google.com will also include eligible non-AMP content.
• The AMP badge icon is being discontinued and will no longer be used to highlight AMP content.

New Page Experience report in Search Console

A new Page Experience report has been added to Google Search Console to provide site-specific information on page experience.

The page experience report is currently shown only for mobile searches.

The Search Console page experience report for desktop was launched on January 17, 2022.

The page experience report provides a summary of the user experience that your website provides to site visitors. Page experience metrics are determined for individual URLs and will be used by Google systems as a ranking signal for mobile search results.

This report combines the Core Web Vitals report with the other page experience signals such as mobile-friendliness, HTTPS and no intrusive interstitials being used.

The Page Experience report provides insights into the percentage of URLs on your site that have a good page experience. This enables you to identify the URLs that need improvements and make changes to improve the user experience.

To view the Page Experience report in Google search console,

• Sign into your google search console account associated with your website.
• In the left hand menu, click on Page Experience under Experience.

 




Google Search Console menu

• If you see “Not enough data collected for this property” on the Page experience page. It means that your website URLs do not have enough data collected to show the Core Web Vitals metrics.
• If there is enough data collected, you will see a chart which shows:
  • The percentage of URLs with a good page experience.
  • The total search impressions that the good URLs received
  • Information on page experience signals including core web vitals, mobile usability, security issues, HTTPS and ad experience.

   
  To view an example of the Page Experience report on Google, go to this link:
  https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/04/more-details-page-experience

How to Improve Your Page Experience

To improve the page experience of your website, there are several factors to focus on. You may need the help of a web developer and technical SEO expert to audit your website and make some additional changes to improve user experience, page speed and website optimization.

• Site Audit Run a full website audit to determine what your current site performance values are so you can determine which factors need improvement.
• Improve Page Speed The page speed of your website is an important factor to improve user experience. Page speed is used for the Core Web Vitals metrics. Make sure your website loads fast and all images are kept small in size. Check your core web vitals and page speed on Page Speed Insights.

   
  53% of mobile site visitors will leave a mobile website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load (Google)
   

  

  Page Speed Insights

  For more information on how you can improve page speed, read our blog post on
  Speed Matters: 4 reasons why page speed impacts website SEO rankings and conversions

• Website must be mobile-friendly A mobile-friendly and responsive website is essential today to provide website visitors with a good user experience. Test if your web page is mobile-friendly with the Mobile-friendly test.


Mobile Friendly Test

• Website must have HTTPS security A secure website is one of the ranking signals that is used by Google to evaluate user experience. Google also flags websites that are not secure in the Chrome browser. Ensure that your website uses secure HTTPS protocols. Your web hosting company can help you obtain a HTTPS security certificate.
• Disable pop-ups and interstitials Pop-ups and interstitials can make accessing content difficult for web visitors. For a good user experience, all pop-ups should be disabled.

Changes to the Page Experience Update

On 8/4/21, Google removed Safe Browsing from the Page Experience Report. Safe browsing is still very important to ensure that searching the internet is safe for users. However, it is not a ranking signal. Any issues with safe browsing on your website will still be flagged in Search Console reports.

Conclusion

The user experience of a website is becoming more important for SEO rankings on Google. This is clear with the rollout of the page experience update.

The Page Experience update is a new search ranking signal that will be used by Google along with their many other search algorithms to determine the SEO rankings of web pages.

This is a good time to evaluate your website user experience and make improvements to provide a good user experience to your website visitors. This will help to improve your SEO rankings when the page experience update completes roll out.

First Published: June 23, 2021. Updated: January 17, 2022.

References

• Timeline for bringing Page Experience ranking to Desktop
• More time, tools, and details on the page experience update
• Simplifying the Page Experience Report

Related Articles

1. Speed Matters: 4 reasons why page speed impacts website SEO rankings and conversions
2. 7 Reasons Why Mobile Friendly Websites Are Essential For Online Marketing
3. Prepare for Google’s Mobile-First Indexing Change: Website and SEO Impacts
4. Responsive web design: Why is it important?

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