New Google Ranking Factor: Page Experience Signal

Google revealed in late May that a new “Page Experience” rating signal would be implemented in 2021. This ranking factor evaluates the overall experience that pages offer users by combining Core Web Vitals (page speed, responsiveness, and stability) with other well-known metrics such as mobile-friendliness, HTTPS, disruptive interstitials, and Safe Browsing.

This announcement isn’t a huge surprise. Page speed load time and other metrics such as mobile-friendliness and HTTPS are already ranking factors. Google has been telling us for years to make our sites faster and to focus on providing great web experiences for users. With Google set to combine these known ranking signals, it’s definitely something to prepare for going into 2021. However, Google has made a point of saying “Page Experience” will be less important than having high-quality, relevant content. Content is king, after all.

Google Search Console, Page Speed Insights, Lighthouse, Chrome Dev tools, and the Chrome UX Report now use core Web Vitals metrics. As a result, SEOs and developers have plenty of time to familiarise themselves with these metrics and begin experimenting.

AMP Requirement Changes

Google also stated that the “Page Experience” signal will be factored into how content is ranked in the Top Stories carousel on mobile. Traditionally, AMP (accelerated mobile pages) has been required to rank within the Top Stories section, but Google will be removing this requirement. In other words, AMP pages will still have the potential to rank in Top Stories, but they will compete with other pages for those rankings starting in 2021. This news has some publishers wondering if they should continue to allocate resources toward AMP in the future. The best course of action seems to be wait and test.

E-Commerce Corner

As a result of COVID-19, people have been doing a majority of their shopping online. In fact, online spending in May exceeded holiday 2019 online spending. We may see some of this shift as stores begin to re-open, but it’s clear that e-commerce websites are going to need to stay competitive in organic search results. Moz provides some helpful tips to prepare e-commerce websites for a post-COVID bounce back.

In April, Google announced it was going to bring free product listings to Google’s Shopping tab. And in late June, Google began expanding these listings into knowledge panel results within main organic search results. Here at Finsbury Media, we’ve been working on developing processes and workflows around this to ensure we’re providing optimal results for our e-commerce clients.

Featured Snippet Changes

On the desktop, we’ve seen some interesting improvements to featured snippet results. When you click on a featured snippet tab, Google often scrolls you to the related content section and highlights the exact text in yellow. It’s an attempt to make it easier for users to find the details shown in the snippet inside the content of the rating tab. There is no special tagging in place. Google will automatically highlight the text.

New Head of Search at Google

Prabhakar Raghavan is the new head of search at Google. He previously ran the Ads and Commerce team at Google, and will now oversee the Search and Ads teams. The reorganization and merging of teams comes at an interesting time for the company as the Justice Department is expected to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google later this year.

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