How Page Experience Will Impact Ranking
John Mueller recently held a large streaming session and shared insights on the signals that the Page Experience (PE) operates on.
He mentioned that Core Web Vitals will continue to play an important role in ranking, but provided several examples where the page’s usability can be crucial, and in such cases, the ranking impact will decrease.
During one discussion, there was talk about a site whose ranking metrics worsened. This decline coincided with the release of the PE update on desktop devices. The webmaster concluded that the reason for the drop was unsatisfactory Core Web Vitals scores, and inquired with a Google employee how this signal would affect site ranking in search results.
He received the following response:
- PE may have less impact on ranking when users specifically want to see certain sites in search results;
- This signal will be useful if there are a couple of sites with similar search results. In this case, the signal will help choose the most suitable option based on the experience of other users, if the content on the sites is approximately at the same level;
- On desktops, Page Experience will significantly influence rankings;
- Core Web Vitals data won’t lead to major shifts in ranking algorithms but may introduce minor adjustments.
On February 22, 2022, the Page Experience update process was launched, and by March 3, its completion was announced. The initial rollout was planned to be carried out throughout March, but the work progressed significantly ahead of schedule.
As a result of the update on desktop devices, signals reflecting user convenience are taken into account. These signals had already been introduced in mobile search. They include LCP, CLS, and FID, as well as their associated threshold parameters. Other page usability details, such as the use of HTTPS and inter-page updates, remained unchanged.
