Google Page Experience is getting an update - and it’s starting to roll out. The Page Experience Update will contain enhancements to both mobile and desktop.

What Is Page Experience? 

Google’s Page Experience is a collection of signals Google uses to measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a website, beyond the information that is contained on that website. For instance, some of the metrics measured include loading performance, interactivity, and the stability of the page. 

The new Page Experience update is being implemented as part of Google’s ranking system, but it won’t play a full role until August. The update is designed to highlight the pages that offer great user experiences — with that in mind, Google advises that users should not expect drastic changes. Since this is a gradual rollout, changes will come slowly as Google monitors unexpected issues and bugs.

What Does The New Update Contain?

The new update contains enhancements to both desktop and mobile. For instance, the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), First Input Delay (FID), HTTPS Security, and the Absence of Intrusive Interstitials are compatible for both mobile and desktop, while mobile-friendliness obviously only applies to mobile.  

As we already reported, there are several Page Experience Updates that are rolling out and that marketers can enjoy at the end of March, when the update is completely implemented. Google announced that Page Experience will “consider several page experience signals, including the three Core Web Vitals metrics.” 

Google News is getting a change as well - Top Stories carousel will be updated to include all news content that meets the policies of Google News. Therefore, the AMP format isn’t required anymore and because of this, any page irrespective of the Core Web Vitals score will be able to appear in the Top Stories carousel. 

Search Console 

Part of the update is the Page Experience report, which combines the existing Core Web Vitals report with other page experience signals, which is great — having one report not only enhances user experience, but also puts everything in one place. This report also contains metrics and search impressions, which enables users to evaluate performance. It’s also possible to gain additional insights on improvements and performance. 

There’s also a Search Performance Report that Google is implementing - this allows marketers to filter pages that are doing well. This makes it easy to compare how these pages are doing in comparison to other pages on the same website.

The Page Experience is being updated, and its new features are slowly being implemented by marketers. There are enhancements to both mobile and desktop, and there are a variety of reports included in this update that will help marketers not just understand their data, but compare it to other pages on the website. Google News is also receiving an update, and this is great because there are fewer variables for pages to appear in Top Stories. 

Overall, we don’t know how these updates are going to be received by the public. Though one does have to admit they promise some great features, the efficacy of these changes remains to be seen.