Google Update Postponed: Page Experience as a Ranking Factor

As the name implies, these are similar to a person’s vital signs. The Core Web Vitals are a subset of Web Vitals that matter the most. These measurements apply to every page on the internet.

Core Web Vitals provide a quick check of a user’s experience and help evaluate a site’s performance. Core Web Vitals are based on three metrics:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
2. First Input Delay (FID)
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Mobile-Friendliness

Google announced its mobile-friendly update in February of 2015, which established a site’s mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal and increased the number of mobile-friendly websites in search results.

Safe Browsing

Safe browsing allows webmasters to resolve security issues with their website.

Safe Browsing also provides recommendations for each type of security issue.

In 2016, Google provided an update on websites transitioning from HTTP to HTTPS to incorporate secure browsing, enable the best performance, and introduce features to benefit site conversions.

For more information on secure browsing and HTTP vs. HTTPS:

Great, Another Update. So What Should I Do?

As a first step, webmasters can use the following tools to assess and improve their website’s page experience.

To prepare for the 2021 update, use the tools mentioned above to ensure your site meets the new standards for Core Web Vitals, and address any issues. Not fixing these page experience errors could result in a decline in rankings once the update is fully rolled out.

Since the Page Experience update won’t roll out until May 2021, we can’t say for sure how this will affect rankings and search behavior. What we can do is provide best practices, advice, and predictions based on our experience, historical examples, and industry knowledge.

Here’s what Seer team members are saying about the update:

“We’ll want to monitor the impact that this change in organic results has on paid ads’ click-through rate. If there are more signals showing the authority and ease of use of organic results, users may be less inclined to click on ads … This is a great opportunity to join CTR and Bounce Rate data with other user behavior metrics … e.g. Scroll Depth and Dwell Time in heatmaps.”

— Kim J. | Data Strategy Lead

“This latest update just reinforces the importance of having a technically-sound website. We often focus so heavily on content, but remember, the foundation has to be there as well.”

— Tyler C. | Sr. SEO Manager

“We’ll need to take a hard look at what we’re deploying on-site that may prevent pages from loading in a timely fashion. The top things you can do now: 1) Up your page speed sample to understand existing page speed across pages and device categories … 2) Consider exploring server-side tracking implementation to lighten the load on the browser. 3) Improve your governance around third-party tags being deployed on-site …”

— Jocelyn C. | Sr. Analytics & Strategic Partner Lead

“This update highlights a lot of what we already know about page speed and UX, but adds pressure for website owners to prioritize these items in 2021, where they may not have in years past. When planning your development team resources for the coming year, make sure to account for and prioritize the Core Web Vitals metrics.”

— Katelyn S. | Technical SEO Manager

“Google continues to tip off search marketers on what people value. This update presents a great opportunity for those of us in PPC to take notice of what organic content is driving great user experience and leverage that data for paid landing pages. Improving landing page experience using this information will improve quality scores and drive better, and hopefully more efficient, engagement with our paid ads.”

— Dan L. | PPC Team Lead

“This is Google’s latest tactic to turn user-centric ideals into requirements, but they’ve been pushing these paradigms for years. Today it’s security, mobile-friendliness, and performance. Prediction: accessibility will be added to this list in the coming years.”

— Stephen H. | Lead Developer

What are your thoughts on this latest update? Let us know in the comments below!