How Important is Page Experience If You Want to Get Noticed?
Many businesses and websites rely on Google rankings to be seen by the masses. Sure, there are other search engines such as Microsoft’s Bing, but when you think of looking something up, most are going to turn to Google, or if they are privacy concerned – DuckDuckGo.
Adhering to Google’s algorithm has been the main goal for a vast multitude of blogs and websites, using the right keywords, ensuring that content is rich and fulfilling and ensuring that anything gets ranked as high as possible which is why today’s news is worth discussing. Google has decided to roll out a slightly new way to rank web pages which at the time of writing will roll out mid-June of 2021 – if this changes we will keep you posted.
What Exactly is Google’s New Page Experience?
According to Google, their new page experience is designed to highlight pages that offer great user experiences which includes multiple factors to determine what that is. However, they have ensured that the change will not be drastic and existing sites should not be expected to redo existing content in order to follow the new algorithm changes.
There are several updates included in this change which include three core web vitals metrics: FID, LCP, and CLS. The “Top Stories” carousel feature will be updated to include any news content that meets Google’s news policies, meaning that they do not require the previous AMP format. Any page that has relevant content, regardless of page experience status or Core Web Vitals score will be eligible to be on the Top Stories carousel, making it easier for websites to rank higher when posting relevant news.
The Google News app, which is a convenient way that helps many users get news that is tailored to them all in one place, is also seeing updates to include non-AMP content to seemingly improve the overall user experience and deliver news across more places.
Furthermore, Google is getting rid of the AMP badge icon that previously indicated AMP content, this change is thought to be done in order to bring a more seamless user experience. It seems that Google’s aim with these new updates is to eliminate the segregation between news labels in order to make the experience more natural overall.
Moving on, Google is also introducing the Page Experience Report which combines the core web vitals that already exist with HTTPS security, safe browsing status, absence of intrusive interstitials, and mobile friendliness. This new feature shows the percentage of URLs with search impressions and good pace experience, allowing you to evaluate how well a web page is doing in a convenient manner.
Lastly, they are also rolling out an update to the mobile Top Stories feature. Currently it emphasizes AMP results to deliver top results, but as the running theme of Google’s new changes may suggest, AMP results will no longer be necessary for stories to reach the top results on mobile. In addition, Google is also updating the eligibility criteria for the Top Stories experience to longer require AMP in order for stories to be featured in Top Stories on mobile.
Overall, we’ll see how these new updates will play out. It sounds promising initially, but like most things it has to be tested in order to receive final judgement.
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