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Google Page Experience Update Will Launch May 2021 – What Does this Mean for Your Business?

By: Cami Clark    January 29, 2021

Google Page Experience Update Will Launch May 2021 – What Does this Mean for Your Business?

Google announced that in May 2021 they will launch a new algorithm update – the Page Experience update. This update for organic search results focuses on user experience. Google will take expected user experience into consideration for ranking in search results and will show a “visual indicator that highlights pages in search results that have great page experience,” the company noted.

How does the Page Experience update work? Google will consider a set of signals to understand website experience: how quickly a page loads, overall speed, if it’s mobile-friendly, if it runs on HTTPS, if it has intrusive interstitials, whether content jumps around as the page loads, and general user experience. This update is not a surprise as Google has been emphasizing Core Web Vitals and the importance of website speed for a while now. This update means that now more than ever it is very important to deliver a fast and secure website, with great user experience.

How can this update impact your business? When the Page Experience update goes live, Google said it will test various ways to display a visual indicator in the search results. The visual indicator will inform users if a specific search result is expected to have a great experience. Google has shown these types of visual indicators before with AMP icons, slow labels, mobile-friendly labels and more. This means if your website ranks on position two in organic search results, while your competitor’s website ranks on position four but has the visual indicator showing a great page experience, then their website might get the click even with a lower ranking. Higher traffic and CTR over time will result in the competitor’s website receiving higher rankings, while your website’s lower CTR will impact traffic and cause lower rankings over time.

The Page Experience update is currently in testing. More to come.

Sources: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/11/timing-for-page-experience

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/page-experience

https://searchengineland.com/google-page-experience-update-to-launch-in-may-2021-343581