As Mobile Devices have become a way of life, so has the way we search.
The convenience of having your mobile device at the ready means finding information, booking a shopping delivery, or monitoring your favourite teams football results can all be done at a moments notice, without booting up your desktop computer.
With this increase in mobile traffic, the time you have to capture that visitor is even shorter than it was with a desktop device. With this and the increase in online scams, dodgy sites and fake news this means having a fast and secure site has never been as important.
Google also thinks this and slowly that have been concentrating on page experience for users as a ranking metric.
Through both internal studies and industry research, users show they prefer sites with a great page experience. In recent years, Search has added a variety of user experience criteria, such as how quickly pages load and mobile-friendliness, as factors for ranking results. Earlier this month, the Chrome team announced Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics related to speed, responsiveness and visual stability, to help site owners measure user experience on the web. – Google Search Console Blog – Mar 20
This has led to Google’s announcement, that in May of next year they will be rolling out the Google Page Experience Update.
What Is The Google Page Experience Update?
The Google Page Experience Update concentrates on a number of criteria which must be met for a site to rank well in Google. These include
- Page Speed
- Mobile Friendliness
- https:// secure
- Not showing intrusive pop-up’s
Some of these are already ranking metrics which websites should be adhering to anyway, but if your site does not show the https:// secure certificate, or fails the mobile friendly test, then now is the time to get these things fixed.
Page speed is where the biggest change is happening. Rather than just concentrating on the site loading in 3 seconds, Google is now looking at other metrics that determine a user’s experience, how quickly the main parts of a page load, whether the page and buttons jump around as it loads, and how long it takes for the site to be functional.
These metrics are called the core web vitals.
What Are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are a set of performance metrics to measure how happy a visitor would be in browsing a website. It is no longer just about how long it takes for a site to load, but about stability and interactivity.
Each level of interactivity or action is measured in time and given a score according to how long the event takes.
These are then rated “good”, “needs improvements” or “fail”.
Core Web Vitals are split between three main areas.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
This measures the time it takes from your website loading to the main image or content rendering (fully loading) on their browser.
In the above image, we can see how a website is served up in different chunks as it loads, although this usually happens so fast, we hardly notice.
First Input Delay (FID)
This measures how long it takes for the site to be fully interactive i.e responsive to a click, scroll or keyboard input. Whilst it may appear this happens straight away; some scripts can block a site being interactive instantly.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
Have you ever loaded up a web page on your mobile or desktop device and had buttons appear only to appear halfway down the page when the site finally loads? This can be disruptive for users and lead to poor page experience. Google wants to reward sites that keep this a minimum. A good score is 0.1.
How Can I Track Mine?
There are currently a few ways to track the Core Web Vitals Score. You can either use Google’s Page Speed Insights tool and put in your URL and find out how your site performs according to these metrics.
This is measured clearly with a traffic light and shape signal a above with Green being good, orange being needs improvement and red being poor. Further down the report you can also see the main elements causing any issues.
For a more global site level, you can log into your Google Search Console and receive a report on the pages of your site and clearly find out which pages to concentrate on.
What Do I need To Do If I Get A Poor Score?
Unless your build the site yourself, you will probably need a web designer or web developer to improve these metrics. Concentrate on the poor areas first, as these may not only be affecting where you rank in Google but may also be turning away website visitors.
When Does It Role Out?
Some parts of this are already part of the Google algorithm but the update will start rolling out in May 2021. Google may start showing warnings next to sites In Google searches which have a poor page experience.
