Page Experience Update – User Experience will be Ranking Factor
We all agree that users prefer sites with a great page experience. Past few years, Google has added many user experience measures like page speed and mobile-friendliness of a website for ranking. Chrome team has announced Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics related to speed, responsiveness, and visual stability, for the site owners to measure user experience.
Google has started working on this metric and made an early announcement that they will incorporate these page experience metrics in search ranking updates. It will be a ranking factor that will combine Core Web Vitals with existing elements for page experience to understand the quality of a user’s experience on a web page.
Also, page experience metrics will matter to rank in the Top Stories feature in Search on mobile, and Google will remove the AMP requirement to rank in Top Stories. So AMP will not be necessary to be featured in Top Stories on mobile. As per Google, there is no need to take immediate action. The ranking changes will happen next year in 2021 and will provide notice before they roll out.
What is Page Experience
It is a signal that calculates how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page. It includes Core Web Vitals with existing Search signals like mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of the page, so you don’t accidentally tap the button when it shifts suddenly.
Google is combining the signals from Core Web Vitals with existing Search signals for page experience, including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines, calculating the page experience. They said they are planning to incorporate more page experience signals yearly to increase the aspects of user experience.
Page Experience Ranking Signal
With good page experience, you can engage people on your website, but the bad experience can be a hurdle in the way of people finding information on your website. Google will add page experience to other signals for ranking search results and provide the page results and information people look for.