Last May, for the first time in the history of the search engine, Google announced well in advance the implementation of a future update of its search algorithm. Under the name of Google Page Experience Update, it announced an important update that would take place during the year 2021 without specifying the date yet. An update related to the loading speed of the site, safe browsing, HTTPS, compatibility with mobile devices, cumulative design changes and, ultimately, many of the values measured by the Core Web Vitals that we have already talked about in this blog sometimes.
During the past month of November it launched a new ad. It finally confirmed that the Google Page Experience Update would take place in May 2021. In the official announcement, they explained: “Today we announced that the user experience signals in the rankings will be implemented in May 2021.” Making it clear that, now, from this update, the user experience will be decisive to rank in the search results. Google also added that it will test by showing a “visual indicator that highlights pages in search results that have a great user experience.”
Throughout these months Google has been informing on several occasions, informally, about this update, indicating that, unlike other major updates to the search algorithm, the Google Page Experience Update would not take place on a specific date in the month of May. The Mountain View forecast is that it will be implemented progressively throughout the month.
But, finally, yesterday announced that it was postponed.
Google Page Experience Update is postponed until June
On April 19, Google announced that they will start using the page experience as part of their ranking systems from mid-June. But that the implementation will not be complete until the end of August. As they say in their statement: “You can think of it as adding a flavoring to a meal you are preparing. Instead of adding the flavor all at once to the mix, we will add it slowly over this period of time. ”
What will be implemented in this update
Following Google’s forecasts, these are the planned updates:
Launch of the Google Page Experience Update in mid-June
- The classification change will gradually begin to be implemented.
- The AMP badge will begin to disappear.
- The experience badge for the page will continue to be tested. Although Google has not finalized its plans for this badge yet.
- The featured news carousel feature on Google Search will be updated to include all news content, provided it complies with Google News content guidelines and policies. AMP is no longer required here to rank on certain top stories. Google also clarified that this is “independent of your Core Web Vitals score or the status of the page experience.” This change will also start in mid-June and end in late August.
- AMP is also no longer required for the Google News application or for news.google.com.
- Possibly part of this update is safe browsing for mobile devices and without intrusive interstitials.
Launch scheduled for late August
- Google plans to complete the rollout of the Page Experience Update ranking change. This will include all Core Web Vitals such as LCP, FID, and CLS (as well as the recent Chrome to CLS solution).
- The removal of the AMP requirement for the Top News Carousel will also end entirely.
Although this postponement means more time to prepare the websites for Google’s requirements, at Sinapsis we continue with our work plan by adapting our clients’ pages.