Google Search to Start Considering ‘Page Experience Update’ for Ranking From Mid-June 2021

Google Search will gradually start considering the “new page experience update” for its ranking systems starting the middle of June 2021, the Mountain View company announced. The update was earlier planned to be rolled out in May. The search giant said that it wanted to ensure that Web publishers and site owners have some time to implement the changes required for the page experience update. The enhancements coming from the new update are aimed to improve Google Search. It will also stop displaying the AMP badge. The icon is available for now, and is used to indicate AMP content on search results.

“We'll begin using page experience as part of our ranking systems beginning in mid-June 2021. However, page experience won't play its full role as part of those systems until the end of August,” Google said in a blog post.

The page experience update was initially announced in November and is designed as one of the factors to let Google's ranking systems consider page experiences while surfacing pages on its search engine. The company said that the update should not result in any “drastic changes” for sites.

Google's move to go for the gradual rollout is also expected to help look for any unexpected or unintended issues.

“We hope that this adjusted rollout schedule will help you continue to make refinements to your website with page experience in mind,” the search giant said.

In addition to announcing the new rollout schedule, Google has detailed what all will be a part of the latest update. This will include three Core Web Vitals metrics, namely the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Google will also no longer consider AMP format as a parameter for showing results on its Top Stories carousel feature and will index sites for that offering if they meet the Google News policies. Google Search will also start disappearing the AMP badge icon as the page experience update begins to roll out later this year.

Google has also brought a dedicated Page Experience report that will be available in the Search Console. This new report will include the existing Core Web Vitals report as well as components such as HTTPS security, absence of intrusive interstitials, safe browsing status, and mobile friendliness. It will show metrics such as the percentage of URLs with good page experience and search impressions over time.

The Search Performance report is also getting the ability to filter pages with good page experience to let site owners keep track of how those pages compare to other pages on the same site.

Additionally, as Google appears to be working to do away with the AMP framework, it has also announced the general availability of signed exchanges (SXG) on Google Search for all webpages.

“SXG allows Google Search to leverage the privacy-preserving prefetching technique in compatible browsers, which can lead to improved page experience,” the company explained.

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