Investis Ltd.

05/05/2021 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 05/05/2021 11:45

Google's Page Experience Update: What you Need to Know

In May of 2020, Google announced an upcoming change to their algorithm, including new signals for ranking that focus on the end user's experience of the page. This is part of an effort to favor websites that are safe, load quickly, and are mobile-friendly.

'We will introduce a new signal that combines Core Web Vitals with our existing signals for page experience to provide a holistic picture of the quality of a user's experience on a web page.'

Since Google's rollout of the mobile-first index change in 2016, web developers have prioritized mobile layouts for their websites. Since then, we've noticed a common thread among algorithm updates that consistently move Google SERPs toward a more useful, usable user experience once you click a result. This algorithm update will require SEOs and web developers to streamline their tactics with content creators and UX strategists in order to proactively optimize toward these changes.

A solid technical foundation and good UX have always been best practices, but this update bundles many of these criteria. Here is what that looks like:

​

(Image: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience.html)

So, What Do We Know?

While we are still unsure of the weight of these algorithm changes, Google has implied this will be big.

According to Google, we will be notified ahead of time with any updates to Core Web Vitals:

'Web Vitals and Core Web Vitals represent the best available signals developers have today to measure quality of experience across the web, but these signals are not perfect and future improvements or additions should be expected. The Core Web Vitals are relevant to all web pages and featured across relevant Google tools. Changes to these metrics will have wide-reaching impact; as such, developers should expect the definitions and thresholds of the Core Web Vitals to be stable, and updates to have prior notice and a predictable, annual cadence.'

Google rarely announces any actual changes in their algorithm, especially in an announcement. This update is important enough to them that they wanted to give everyone time to optimize their websites a year ahead of the rollout.

This update was originally scheduled for May 2021, but the full rollout has been has now been pushed to the end of August 2021.

What Existing Page Experience Signals Should be Considered?

Mobile Friendliness

Most Google searches come from mobile devices. If sites are not mobile friendly, their organic rankings will be impacted.

Google already uses mobile-first indexing as the default for crawling new websites. This means Google prioritizes the mobile version of website content for indexing and ranking.

To prepare for the update, mobile friendliness is a prerequisite. This can be tested with Google's Mobile Friendly Test or Google Search Console's Mobile Usability dashboard.

Consider How Search Intent Changes for Mobile Searchers:

  • Is the content easily readable & scrollable?
  • Use consumer behavior research tools like Google's Micro Moments to inform mobile development and optimizations

How Can You Measure Your Mobile Friendliness?

For more insights on mobile site best practices, refer to Google's Mobile Guide.

Intrusive Interstitials

Intrusive interstitials are popups that impede a user's ability to access the content they want. These create negative user experiences on mobile devices. Google rolled out an intrusive interstitial penalty in 2017.

Pop-ups That Are Bad:

  • A pop-up that covers the main content immediately after the user navigates to a webpage from the search results or while they are viewing the content
  • A standalone interstitial that a person must dismiss before accessing the main content
  • A webpage with above-the-fold content like a standalone interstitial where the original content is inline underneath

Pop-ups That Are Acceptable:

  • Interstitials for legal obligations (like cookie use notices or age verifications)
  • Login dialogs on sites, such as to access private content
  • Banners that are easily dismissible and don't take up too much space on the webpage

How Can I Learn More About Intrusive Interstitials?

Safe Browsing

Google launched the safe browsing project in 2007 to create a more secure internet. Safe Browsing in Page Experience only affects websites that are flagged as deceptive in chrome browser, which is a very small minority of sites. Safe Browsing in Page Experience affects websites with:

  • Malware or malicious scripting
  • Phishing threats/vulnerabilities for users to be targeted by bad actors

If your website offers software downloads or installs, Google's Safe Browsing in Page Experience determines whether your site is built with 'the spirit of our Software Principles.'

This means Google wants sites with software installation processes that are straightforward and based on clear choices made by the user. The software download or install should offer the user a clear value proposition and should be easy to uninstall or disable.

A user shouldn't worry about malicious content when they visit your website. Google makes sure your website doesn't contain hacked content, malware , unwanted software, or social engineering.

How Can You Measure Safe Browsing?

HTTPS

In 2014, Google announced using HTTPS would be a small ranking signal. HTTPS is a secure communication between browsers and servers and includes the encrypted exchange of data. Using HTTPS protects sites and users from potential cyber-attacks.

​

​(Image: https://www.tutorialsteacher.com/https/what-is-https)

In another effort to serve safe websites to users, Google favors websites that have certified their website's identity to browsers, specifically to Chrome. This security certificate is called HTTPS. When a website is not secure, a warning is displayed in the browser's URL box that tells the user the website is 'Not Secure or Dangerous.'

How Can You Ensure Your Website is Secure?

What Core Web Vitals Should be Considered?

While the metrics included in the new Core Web Vitals Report in Google Search Console aren't new, they are weighted more heavily as ranking factors. The metrics listed in the Core Web Vitals Report include:

  • LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
  • FID (First Input Delay)
  • CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)

To Google, these metrics best determine a website's loading speed, interactivity speed, and visual stability. These indicators are prioritized to provide the best experiences to users leaving the search engine results page.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP):

According to Search Engine Journal, page speed has been a ranking factor since 2010. With LCP, Google looks for the largest element that loads on a page and how long it takes for the element to load.

'Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is an important, user-centric metric for measuring perceived load speed because it marks the point in the page load timeline when the page's main content has likely loaded-a fast LCP helps reassure the user that the page is useful.'

LCP times are most closely associated with:

  • Images
  • Video
  • Background images loaded via CSS
  • Heading tags
  • Tables
  • Lists
  • Any other block element with text

LCP is used as a user experience metric. Better LCP times correlate with users staying on the page longer. Here's how Google categorizes LCP in seconds:

​

​(Image: Screaming Frog)

Though there are many other factors, there is an interesting correlation between LCP and position in search engine results pages:

​

​​(Image: Screaming Frog)

This study by Screaming Frog shows most sites are not optimized for LCP.

LCP Times Are Most Closely Associated With:

  • Server and/or software response times
  • Webpage resources and bandwidth
  • Browser software and plugins
  • Site JavaScript and CSS code

First Input Delay (FID):

First Input Delay (FID) measures how effectively a page responds to a user's activity. Specifically, it measures how quickly a page is to respond to actions. For example, if a user clicks on a button that triggers a pop-up on the page, how long does it take for the website to process and deliver that request? Often, these issues need to be addressed by the site's developer because troubleshooting may involve trimming down JavaScript and other types of code. When optimizing for FID, it's important to run tests to determine where delays are coming from.

Google states:

'First Input Delay (FID) is an important, user-centric metric for measuring load responsiveness because it quantifies the experience users feel when trying to interact with unresponsive pages-a low FID helps ensure that the page is usable. FID measures the time from when a user first interacts with a page (i.e. when they click a link, tap on a button, or use a custom, JavaScript-powered control) to the time when the browser is actually able to begin processing event handlers in response to that interaction.'

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the visual stability of a page. This metric tells Google how many elements on a page move, shift or appear/disappear as the page loads, especially when these elements behave unexpectedly. A common example of this is when you are on a site and you're trying to scroll down to read more of an article, but the page keeps shifting back to the top of the screen every few seconds. This can be tricky to diagnose for developers, but there are tools that can help identify problematic elements on a page.

Google states:

'Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is an important, user-centric metric for measuring visual stability because it helps quantify how often users experience unexpected layout shifts-a low CLS helps ensure that the page is delightful.'

We believe that CWVs will not be as impactful as content that matches a query. The CWVs changes will probably be seen more with more competitive keywords when several websites are trying to rank for the same queries. If they are all serving a user's intent (in Google's eyes), then the algorithm will look at the delivery of that information (CWVs) as the next factor.

Tools to Help Measure and Diagnose Core Web Vitals:

Several Google tools can be used to help measure and diagnose Core Web Vitals:

  • Search Console
    • Use the Page Experience, Core Web Vitals and Mobile Usability sections to better understand what specific issues Google is seeing with your site as they relate to page experience.
  • PageSpeed Insights
    • Analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster.
  • Web Vitals Extension
    • This extension measures Core Web Vitals, providing instant feedback on loading, interactivity and layout shift metrics.
  • WebPageTest
    • Run a free website speed test from around the globe using real browsers at consumer connection speeds with detailed optimization recommendations.
  • Chrome UX Report
    • Public dataset of real user experience data on millions of websites. Unlike lab data, Chrome UX Report data comes directly from opted-in users.
  • Chrome DevToo
    • Set of web developer tools built directly into the Google Chrome browser. Allows for tools to instrument, inspect, debug and profile chromium, chrome and other blink-based browsers.
  • Lighthouse
    • Open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. You can run it against any web page, public or requiring authentication.

When Will the Algorithm Change Take Place?

Google has announced the new ranking changes will be introduced gradually in mid-June of 2021, but the full effect of the update will not take part until the end of August 2021.

What is Different About This Algorithm Change Than Others?

The biggest difference between this algorithm update and previous updates is the announcement. It's rare for Google to announce any real changes to their algorithm, and they decided this update is important enough to give brands, SEOs, and developers time to prepare ahead of the rollout.

Google has made enhancements to the tools in Google Search Console. These new data-driven dashboards provide sitewide core web vitals performance stats at the URL level. There are also other success metrics you can discover by referencing the Page Experience report. This report combines the existing Core Web Vitals report with other success metrics that influence page experience signals to Google.

This update innovates coding and web practices in SEO, from migrating into next-gen image formats to Google allowing the use of a new content negotiation web-bundling mechanism called Signed Exchange (SXG). This format was previously used by Google to drive performance in their AMP technology. With Page Experience update, they are advocating the use of this privacy-preserving, pre-fetching technology. This isn't required for the Page Experience update, but Google suggests that it helps. Google is making direct causation claims between Core Web Vital increases with SXG implementation.

'You can consider the technology (SXG) as one of the options for improving your page experience... Signed Exchange can help optimize its delivery to end users, and we've observed improvement to LCP metrics due to this.' - Core Web Vitals & Page Experience FAQs

In Google's Search Central blog post from April 19th, there is a Google highlight on results from testing SXG on Nikkei Style, a large Japanese publication. They attribute a 300-millisecond reduction in LCP to a 12% increase in user engagement and 9% more pageviews per session on Android.

Investis Digital Point of View

It's difficult to determine the full impact of the algorithm update until the changes are rolled out. Historically, core algorithm updates have taught us the following lessons:

  • Predictions for ranking changes are hit and miss. Most of the time, we won't know the full impact of algorithm updates until they are implemented.
  • The effects of the core update will vary greatly from website to website. Some will see no changes at all, and some may be affected significantly. Core algorithm updates vary by industry, as well.
  • Sometimes websites are affected immediately, but more often the changes are gradual.

This is a rare instance of Google being forthright and transparent about something that will impact organic search results. Google is also arming us with the information and tools ahead of time, so that any necessary updates can be made in a timely manner.

The SEO industry is paying close attention to these developments, and it's widely accepted that this update will negatively impact those who are unprepared.

Jim Bader - VP, SEO

'While we do not yet understand exactly how impactful the Page Experience Update will be to websites in various verticals, there is one thing is certain. To anyone who has been in the SEO industry for a while, none of this should come as a shock: Google has been talking about many of these elements for years. One of the most talked about components, page load speed, as a ranking factor has been out there since 2010. If you haven't taken page load speed seriously, guess what? It's time.'

Seth Nickerson - Sr Director, SEO

​

'What I do like about Core Web Vitals is that it is largely tangible for our clients and their dev teams. Clients understand concepts like layout shift and largest contentful paint because sites that fail those metrics are frustrating to use. I will be really interested to see how this impacts organic search because things like obtrusive interstitials are very subjective. I see a lot of them in the wild and am not convinced that Google actually takes any sort of actions on those sites that have really obnoxious interstitials.'

Michael Pasco - Director, Content Strategy​

'It's not particularly clear how pertinent these metrics are going to be yet, as I believe they will still prioritize rankings for content that's most relevant to a query, even if the page experience is not optimized. Featured snippets are a way to bring the info forward and out of a website's own constraints.'

Jeff Putnam - Lead, UX Strategy

​

'I find the emphasis on First Contentful Paint, Largest Contentful Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift to be particularly interesting. They're UX issues for sure, but the fix for low scores on them comes down to development fixes nine times out of 10.'

Google Page Experience - Timeline & Updates

May 2020:Google announces Page Experience Update.

November 2020:Google confirms May 2021 Rollout of Page Experience Update.

April 2021:Google announces it is postponing the rollout of the page experience update, specifically the ranking change, from May 2021:

  • Gradual rollout that won't start until mid-June 2021
  • Will not be fully rolled out until the end of August