Google Page Experience: A New Search Engine Ranking Factor

Google Page Experience - a new ranking factor

You want high rankings in Google. You know that high visibility is incredibly valuable. The best websites get a lot of traffic from Google for free. And you want that, too.

However, you need to be up-to-date with Google's algorithm changes.

Don't worry. We're here to help!

You'll learn how to prepare your website for the upcoming Google update (the new algorithm change is called Google Page Experience).

In this article, you'll learn:
✔ how Google defines "page experience"
✔ what you need to know about these metrics
✔ how you can prepare for the algorithm update

Page Experience – what is it?

Although much is known about Google ranking factors, how they come together to form Google's search engine algorithm is a tightly kept secret.

With that in mind, Google is quite clear about the page experience criteria. They've even posted official information about it:

Understanding page experience in Google Search results

In short, Google checks if:

your website is mobile-friendly
it loads quickly
the page is secure (HTTPS)
there are any intrusive ads
the content jumps around as the page is loading

Google takes this all into account and rates the overall page experience. It's going to be a really important ranking factor next year.

There are a lot of tools you can use to check your page's performance. For example:

These tools crawl your website and present a report you can use for optimising your page.

Great performance results of a fresh WordPress installation at boldility.com — Pingdom Tools

When using these tools and reading the reports, focus on the most important metrics regarding the upcoming algorithm update:

Metrics of Page Experience

Web Vitals are essential metrics for a healthy site. Google is open about them as well:

Web Vitals – web.dev

There is developer information in the link above. However, if you don't want to get into the details, check out the key takeaways.

In short, Web Vitals include user-centred metrics such as:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
First Input Delay (FID)

Here is a little more information on each one:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Measures a page's loading performance. It reports the render time of the largest image or text block visible within the view port.

Google expects your website's LCP to be 2.5 seconds or less.

Okay, so you know the definition, but it's not as clear as seeing some real life examples (Source):

Long Largest Contentful Paint:

Average Largest Contentful Paint:

Fast Largest Contentful Paint:

By the way, notice how Google's home page loads images in the last set. There are empty containers at first. This method is related to the next metric:

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

CLS is an unexpected movement of page content. This metric helps you address the problem by measuring how often it occurs for real users.

It measures the sum total of all individual layout shift scores for every unexpected layout shift that occurs during the entire lifespan of the page.

Google expects it to happen rarely:

How bad can a user experience be when the layout shifts during a page loading? Check out the GIF below... Has this ever happened to you?

Elements on this page shift around as it continues to load. In the example above, the user intended to click on "No, go back" but the sudden shift caused them to click "Yes, place my order" instead! (Source)

First Input Delay (FID)

The First Input Delay measures the time from when a user interacts with a page (i.e. when they click a link) to the time when the browser is actually able to begin processing an action (i.e. loading a new page).

This metric is often related to web hosting performance.

How to Prepare?

Shutterstock/TierneyMJ

1. Be sure you use fast web hosting

We wrote a guide about choosing a web hosting. Definitely check out if yours matches the criteria: Which Web Hosting Service Should I Choose for My Online Shop?