*Update* Google has recently announced that this update will not be rolling out until mid June and won’t be fully rolled out until August.

Google announced in November 2020 that the change to include page ranking signals in the Google Search Ranking would roll out in May 2021. With that date rushing quickly towards us, we thought we would take a look into what exactly this change entails.

These page experience signals will help Google measure how a user perceive the experience of interacting with a web page. This will allow them to ensure they provide only the most helpful and user-friendly experiences from the web.

This new roll out will combine the existing search signals (mobile friendly, safe browsing, HTTPS & no intrusive interstitials) with 3 new signals, labelled as “Core Web Vitals”. These new signals are Loading, Interactivity and Visual Stability.

Loading – Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): LCP measures when the largest content element becomes visible and is useful in determining when the main content of a page has finished loading.

Interactivity – First Input Delay (FID): FID measures the time from when a user first interacts with your site to the time when the browser responds to that interaction.

Visual Stability – Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This is a metric that aims to quantify how often users experience sudden shifts in page content.

As Google rolls this out, they aim to introduce a visual indictor that indicates pages with great page experience. This is huge news as it could play a vital factor in a user choosing your site and result over another page, especially if you are still ranked below them.

Google have released numerous tools that you can use to start improving your page experience. If you would like to know more about each of the individual tools available, head on over to web.dev/vitals-tools/ for more information about each.

If you’d like to know how Google values your website, please get in touch with us today for a free review.