A new and important update of the Google algorithm will take place in 2021. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the search giant decided to announce their next update in advance, so that companies could prepare.
In this article we will talk about the new Google Page Experience. And as the name already delivers, the focus will be even more on the user experience (UX).
Mobile access has transformed the experience that consumers have with a brand or product. What worked on the desktop, with the user sitting in front of the computer, is likely not to work in the various contexts that mobile offers.
And that's very impacting in Brazil, as shown by studies. Until last year, three out of four Brazilians had access to the internet and, among them, the mobile phone was the most used equipment. Between 2017 and 2018, the percentage of people aged 10 years or older who accessed the internet by mobile phone went from 97% to 98.1%.
User Experience, or UX, is the consumer experience when using a product or service. And it has a very important role. Even marketers need to understand a little of this. This is because the UX works with functional and practical issues, but also with the whole emotional side of the experience.
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Contents
Toggle- What's Page Experience?
- Essential metrics of the web
- These focal points correspond to three new metrics:
- How to prepare for what's coming
- Conclusion
What's Page Experience?
In an ideal world, the user should click on a link in the search results and the corresponding page would appear instantly. But we all know this is a dream. Over the years, pages have increased in size and JavaScript's popularity has made them increasingly complex and difficult to load.
Even with extremely fast Internet connections and powerful devices, loading a web page can be a hindrance to browsing. For users, waiting for the shipment has already become a cause of stress. Not to mention the poor performance that some websites offer and end up leading to click errors and similar.
For years, optimizing the performance of the sites meant mainly optimizing speed. But loading times are just part of the equation and the other part is harder to define and measure. It's about how a user experiences all these optimizations.
The site can be fast according to the metrics, but is it really fast? So it's time to take a drastic look at the page experience.
Let's hear what Google has to say:
“Great experiences on the page allow people to do more and get more deeply involved; on the other hand, a bad experience on the page can prevent a person from finding valuable information on a page. ”
Check out the items that are taken into consideration in Page Experience:
Essential metrics of the web
Or... Core Web Vitals
In May 2020, Google announced the Web Vitals – a set of metrics fully researched to help anyone determine opportunities to improve the experience of their websites.
Within these new metrics, there is a subset of metrics on which each site owner should concentrate, the so-called Core Web Vitals.
“the main vitals of the web are a set of user-centered metrics in the real world that quantify the main aspects of the user experience.”
Google's Second
Each Vital Web Core analyzes a specific part of the page experience puzzle and together helps Google and you understand the perceived experience of a website. The main Web vitals are available in all Google tools that measure the experience of the page.
Core Web Vitals will evolve over time and new ones can be added. In 2020, Google identified three specific focal points:
- Loading
- Interactivity
- Visual stability
These focal points correspond to three new metrics:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): measures loading performance. To provide a good user experience, the LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of the page loading start.
- FID (First Input Delay) or delay in the first entry: the FID analyzes how long it takes for a browser to respond to an interaction initiated by the user (clicking on a button, for example).
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) or Cumulative layout change: does this new metric measure the percentage of the screen affected by the movement, i.e., do things jump on the screen?
As you see, these main metrics not only analyze how quickly something loads. They also analyze how long it takes for the elements to be ready for use.
The cumulative layout change is the most innovative in the group. This has nothing to do with speed, but with the so feared “bad user experience”, like pressing the wrong button, because an ad was loaded at the end of the day. Think about how you feel when that happens? Very annoying, right?
>>> While the update is not enough, it is important to remember some factors Google already considered as rules before the creation of Core Web Vitals:
Mobile-Friendly: the page should be compatible with mobile devices. Check that your pages are compatible by doing the mobile compatibility test.
Safe browing: the page cannot have malicious or misleading content. Check if your site has any secure navigation problems in safety problem report.
HTTPS: make sure your website connection is secure. Also see if there are any mixed content problems (safe and unsafe) on the pages. If you still don't have a security certificate on the site, know that Google may be penalizing you for this.
Intrusive interstitials: the content of the page should be easily accessible to the user without intrusive popups or banners. Learn how interstitials can make content less accessible.
How to prepare for what's coming
Should I be worried about this update?
Yes, especially as we have already talked about, because of the increasing importance of a good user experience. It has nothing to do with the change in the algorithm itself, but to do the least that is expected from a site: to offer fast and secure navigation, as well as really relevant content.
With the anticipated ad of Page Experience, Google's goal is to provide time enough for SEO professionals and website owners to adapt to changes.
Google is working hard to get all site owners to adapt to changes in the page experience. New or updated tools help you get the necessary information.
They also help you understand what all this means.
- Lighthouse on DevTools is now in version 6.0
- PageSpeed Insights incorporates new metrics
- The new Google Chrome User Experience Report API allows you to access up to 28 days of historical data to your URLs
- Experience Section in DevTools Performance panel
- The new Search Console Core Web Vitals report to get a summary of the site performance
- Web Extension Vitals Chrome for quick access to browser metrics
Conclusion
Content is still I.E.R. Start testing right now, start getting better! Until recently, optimizing your site for user experience and speed was like a blind flight. It was hard to understand what makes a site fast and what to do about it.
Over the years, Google has seen the need for good metrics and has heard the voice of users who needed usable, safe and fast websites.
By announcing these metrics as rating factors, Google makes the page experience measurable and considers it useful enough to evaluate the websites.
Remember that the update will not be released until 2021, but the tools are available (as the links above), so you can start testing and improving.
Don't you know a lot about algorithms or SEO? Count on Nationalvox to help you with this challenge. For more than 15 years we have been experts on websites with excellent performance on Google, so that your product or business stands out and get the deserved results of search and sales.
See you next Post!
