Everything We Know About Google's Page Experience Update

Update: The Page Experience Update has finally finished rolling out, it took longer than Google had originally estimated.

The page experience rollout is complete now, including updates to Top Stories mobile carousel. Changes to Google News app have started to rollout as well and will be complete in a week or so.

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) September 2, 2021

Google’s much anticipated Page Experience Update is now rolling out globally, meaning it could hit any site anywhere in the world across Google’s search engines. The roll out will be slow and steady and is aimed at promoting websites that provide a better user experience. The new ranking factor is called “Page Experience” and it bundles a few past ranking factors along with new ones. HTTPS, Mobile Pop-up Penalty, Safe Browsing, and Mobile Friendliness have impacted rankings as far back as 2014. Now they are being grouped with “Core Web Vitals” as part of the Page Experience Ranking factor.

The page experience update is now slowly rolling out (Top Stories will begin using this new signal by Thursday). It will be complete by the end of August 2021. More here: https://t.co/kDwhhOYklK

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) June 15, 2021

In this update Google will consider various page experience factors for rankings and will drop an eligibility factor for the Google News Top Stories carousel.

The update has been used by hucksters to sell unneeded SEO services (or claim an SEO is not doing their job) and been the talk of the SEO community for months debating how this will impact SERPs. As with most SEO updates there are a lot of unknowns, however, Google has been fairly upfront with this one and has given us quite a bit of information to work with. Undoubtedly SEOs or researchers will uncover more as the impacts become fully known. When there is a large enough consensous or our own research shows something previously unknown it will be included in this document.

Here is everything we know about the Google Search June 2021 Core Update

Page Experience (2021) Update Vitals

Date Started: June 15th, 2021 (Global)
Date Completed: September 2nd, 2021
First Impact Reported: Unknown
Most Impacted Industry(ies): Unknown
Most Impacted Site(s): Unknown
Most Impacted Website Types: Unknown
Most Impacted Content Types: Unknown
SEO Change Proven to Improve: Unknown

Known Issues

One problem with this update is that it is rolling out at the same time as Google’s June 2021 Core Update and just before the July 2021 Core Update. This may make it difficult to understand what is happening to your website as your rankings decrease or increase.

Documentation

Google’s Original Announcement – November 10th, 2020: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/11/timing-for-page-experience

April Updates Announcement – April 19th, 2021: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/04/more-details-page-experience

Core Web Vitals documentation – July 21st, 2020: https://web.dev/vitals/

Changes to Google

This update releases several Algorithm Changes (eligibility or ranking factors), New Features, New Tools, and UX Changes. Here is a brief list of everything we are aware of.

Ranking Factor – Google now has a new ranking factor which considers; Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift (collectively known as Core Web Vitals) in determining the ranking position of a document.
Eligibility Factor – The Top Stories carousel in Google Search results will no longer required AMP (owned by Google). Instead all news stories / pages are now eligible as long as it meets Google News policies.
UX – AMP badges will no longer be shown in search results for AMP content.
App Updates – Google News will use more non-AMP content in the app than before (though Google doesn’t define how much more).
Data – There is now a Page Experience report in Google Search Console.
Data – The Google Search Console Performance Report has been udpated to sort by pages with a good experience.
Google Search also added support for non-AMP signed exchanges (SXG) in search.

Media Coverage of Google’s Page Experience Update

Search Engine Land – Google page experience update now slowly rolling out
Search Engine Round Table – Google Page Experience Update Rolling Out Between June 15 & End Of August

Google Page Experience Update Help

What to do if you were impacted by the Google Page Experience (2021) Algorithm Update

While Google has said to not expect large changes, it is possible some sites will see a big drop in rankings OR a small drop in an important ranking that leads to a big drop in sales, revenue, traffic, or inbound leads. To rememdy this you likely need a faster loading / more user friendly site.

WP Rocket wrote up a great piece on this to aid the SEO for WordPress websites here: Google Page Experience Update 2021: How to Prepare Your WordPress Site

Here are some of our tips:

SSL / HTTPS – Make sure your website has at least a free SSL certificate. This should be something that auto-renews. Talk with your hosting provider to make sure you have this capability to avoid future headaches.
Pages should be built for Mobile-first – Look at your site on mobile, would you convert? Make your site look better for mobile users with an emphasis on the vertical smartphone style screen display type.
Compress your images – Use a service like Kraken to compress images on the web before you upload or like Imagify to automatically compress images when you upload them.
DNS Prefetch – Use DNS prefetch tags to ensure all required third-party content is loaded before your page code, this makes your pages appear faster to users. [how to do this on Shopify]
Use fewer apps / plugins – As a general rule apps/plugins for a CMS tend to slow your site down. Not all of them do this, so be cautious about what you remove in hopes of improving for this new ranking factor.
Use VPS hosting at a minimum – While more expensive than shared hosting, VPS hosting will avoid nasty issues that often come with shared plans (especially Host Gator or Bluehost). Cloud hosting can also be a viable option.
Use a CDN – Cloudflare is probably the most familiar and is a great choice, but there are others too.
Do not display annoying interstitials – Used by gurus and news sites alike, these tend to degrade the user experience but can also be an effective marketing tool. If you do use them make the close button highly visible and give a few moments before showing them.
Keep an SEO in the loop – An SEO that is up-to-date on Core Web Vitals / Page Experience should be included at all stages of UX, design, and marketing when it comes to adding things to your website. If you do not include them until after decisions are made you will run the risk of harming your website’s rankings.