Google is changing its algorithm. Again. Here's what you need to know.
TL; DR Summary:
Google announced publicly that this summer, they’ll be launching their new Page Experience algorithm update
Page Experience measures Google Core Web Vitals like speed of page load, First Input Delay, and Visual Stability, as well as other Google Web Vitals like mobile friendliness, safe browsing, and HTTPS. We’ll go into more detail about each of those factors below.
What this means for you: Optimize your site now, because if it’s not “healthy” according to Google, you will see your organic traffic fall.
Starting mid-June, and rolling out through August of 2021, Google will be doing one of their larger and more publicized search algorithm updates. This is important, because each algorithm change can affect your site’s Google Search ranking, which has a direct effect on your site’s visibility and traffic.
This update is called the Page Experience update. The idea behind it is to improve the user experience of using Google Search by showing sites with great Page Experience first. Another way to say this is that Google will reward websites that have a great user experience. (Think, fast load times, easy navigation, mobile-friendliness.)
What is Google Page Experience?
Google Page Experience determines the quality of a user’s experience as they interact with a website. This is measured in three main ways:
Load Time: How long does it take for the main content on a website to become visible?
Interactivity: How long does it take from when a user first interacts with a website (via a click) until the browser can process that information?
Visual Stability: Elements that move unexpectedly, or interstitials (aka, pop-ups) can be very annoying, so Google gives pages with stable visuals a higher score.
Why do they do this? Because they know that pages that have a lower quality Page Experience have a higher bounce rate. And, Google wants to reward sites with a better experience so that, in turn, the pages they recommend are higher quality, and thus, the Google Search experience improves.
Safety for the user is a big part of this, too, which is why Google also wants to see sites that have an SSL certificate and that protect the authenticity of any data that gets exchanged between the user and the website. Sites that start with an HTTPS:// in their URLs are authenticated - that means that users can expect a secure and private online experience when using those sites.
How will Page Experience affect my site’s search ranking?
We think a couple of things will happen.
First of all, we know that sites that do not have a good Page Experience will lose some stature in their search rankings, and as a result, will receive less traffic.
What’s also interesting is that Google has also indicated that it eventually plans to include some sort of visual indicator on their search results to designate sites that sites that meet all their page experience specifications. (This could look like a green/yellow/red symbol, or a percentage score. We don’t know yet.) Logic follows that users will end up preferring the sites with these designations, and those sites will climb in Google’s search rankings.
However, this does NOT mean that a site with bad content will scream to the top of Google rankings over sites that have much better content and have great page experience scores. We think of it as more of a cost of entry type situation - gotta have great page experience at the minimum, but you’ll see the most ranking improvements from having content.
How “healthy” is your website?
If you’re not sure how your site scores when it comes to Google Web Vitals, there are a few things you can do.
If you’re already using Google Search Console, click on Page Experience and Core Web Vitals on the left-side vertical menu. If your site is on the newer side and Google doesn’t have enough data, click on PageSpeed Insights to get a score on some of these important metrics. If you’re not in the green zones, then you might want to consider doing some website updates in preparation of the algorithm.
If the previous paragraph sounded like jibberish, or you don’t have Google Search Console set up yet, you can also use Kafen8’s website audit tool. While it won’t give you the level of detail that the Google Search Console data will, you will get an indication of your site’s health by using the tool.
Or of course, you can contact our team to help you. We can walk you through all of it and help you get your site ready to rock this algorithm update. Reach out to us anytime.
