Google has announced it is soon going to judge the quality of user experience design on your website.

The search engine says its new ranking rules aim to “ensure people get the most helpful and enjoyable experiences from the web.”

Google has declared that websites which adopt the upcoming changes would make the web “more delightful“ and its users “more engaged.”

Takeaway: Great user Experience (UX) design Will make a bigger difference than ever on your visibility in Google. .

The change is known as the Google Page Experience Update.

As with all major changes in Google, it can affect your visibility when people search, affect that is, the health of your website and your business.

In our view, this is a genuinely big deal.

We are officially entering the era of user experience as a big factor in search, and as we will see below, on your listings’ clickability there.

Couple this with Google’s mobile-first update which kicked in this March (2021), which zeroes in on user experience on mobile, and our UX work is cut out for us.

Hungry Monster post: Google’s mobile website deadline: all about mobile-first indexing

Increasingly, Google has valued user-friendliness on your website.  Now it is stating in no uncertain terms that it will measure that user experience, and hold us to it.

So far, one report has it, more than 80% of high authority sites miss the marks. 1 

Attention to your users’ experience (UX) has now become a critical part of your work to show up well on Google.

And it’s just the beginning: the search giant says it intends to ratchet up the pressure for great UX, every year.

The reward is a much better shot at higher visibility on Google.

The search engine says its also thinking about something new: a visual marker,  or badge right on your listing. 2.

There are three new benchmarks factored into the Page Experience that Google wants to see, which Google wants to call the Core Web Vitals. 

These Core Web Vitals are packaged with several other benchmarks that are already used by Google, but, it seems apparent, will get heightened importance now as part of this new update.

This chart by Google sets it out pretty clearly:

Here is how these benchmarks look:

These are Google’s Core Web Vitals, the new tests for user experience

• Loading speed

• Smooth interactivity

• Visual stability

Loading speed

In Googlespeak: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) 

Takes the largest piece of your content and measures how fast it displays to the user. An indicator of overall wait time for the site to come up. 

Smooth interactivity

In Googlespeak: First Input Delay (FID)

Do your pages jump-to when you scroll, click, swipe or other gesture? Or do they delay or even freeze?

Visual stability

In Googlespeak: Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Do page elements shift around, or suddenly move when additional content comes into view?

(Wondering how well are you doing on any of these? Google’s audit called the  Core Web Vitals Report will fill you in.)

These benchmarks already exist. See them as part of the new UX package:

Mobile Friendly

Google recently has cast a far more watchful eye on your cell phone and tablet: that is, a push for top-notch user experience on mobile. 

The Page Experience Update underlines this. It hands us a set of tests for mobile friendly sites, and a tool to check how well you measure up. 

Also: notice that In March, 2021, Google completed its “mobile-first indexing update.”  Now, Google will assess your phone and tablets sites before checking out your desktop version. And note: this March update paid lots of attention to user experience on mobile

Safe-browsing

Google is looking here to weed out sites with security issues.  Spotlighted are malware, deceptive pages, harmful downloads, and “uncommon downloads.”

Check to see if your site has any safe-browsing issues with the Security Issues report.

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/09/more-safe-browsing-help-for-webmasters

Securing sites with HTTPS

Many websites are by now aware of the need to create sites protected by Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), in which website data is encrypted, and is much more secure. 

Does a website begin with https:\\… (and not the old insecure http:\\)?  Then you know it is using this “good-housekeeping-approved” secure communication.  

Amazingly, we still come across sites that are not secure. Browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Mozilla will even flag such a site with a genuinely scary error message. 

It’s simple. Without HTTPS, your site visitors and customers could have their data stolen.

Now Google will penalize your website for this. 

This is a no brainer. Just have it done. 

No intrusive interstitials (like large popups)

Here Google is cracking down on anything that obscures website content.  Examples are pop-ups and whole page display ads. 

Not all “interstitials“ are penalized. Some features that get a pardon: 

• Legally required, such as for cookie usage or for age verification.

• Login windows for private content like email or paid content. 

• Banners that are a “reasonable” size, and can be easily closed out. 

(We are going to guess that COVID-19 banners are also acceptable.)

Among the steps web managers can take to prepare for the update:

• Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

• Take to accelerate Site Speed.

• Install HTTPS encryption 

• Run analytics to identify problem pages: for example, bounce rates and dwell time are two important metrics one can find in Google Analytics and other analytics apps. .

• Remove intrusive popups and other interstitials

The SEO specialist Singlegrain.com has published a clear explanation of steps that can be taken. 

And Google is giving us tools and tests to prepare.

Looking for help or advice about the user experience on your site? Hungry Monster may be able to help. See our work….or contact us.

Google Page Experience FAQ

What is a Google update?

It is any change that affects the way Google evaluates web pages. The more important changes can strongly affect your prominence (ranking) on the Google search page. These usually are changes to Google’s algorithm, a program which uses hundreds of rules, or ranking signals, to judge your site. Only one or two of these core updates occur each year. 

What are the main points in the May 2021 Google Page Experience Update?

• Speed and responsiveness of your site

• Friendliness of your mobile version

• Security
  

Will Page Experience be more important than the content on your webpages?

No. Google has made it clear that great content will still rank more highly in Google Search, even without a terrific page experience. “While all of the components of page experience are important, we will rank pages with the best information overall, even if some aspects of page experience are subpar.”

Is Page Experience the same as user experience?

It is not the same but it is part of User Experience. Page Experience in this year’s update at least, mostly looks at how your pages perform. User Experience (UX) is broader, and takes in everything that makes the website delightful, exciting, valuable, and easy to use. True user experience contributes strongly to a successful, sales-oriented website, and to visibility on Google.  Page Experience is part of that. 

Will the Google Page Experience Update apply to both desktop and mobile website versions?

Maybe. One post by Google states that “at this time” the Page Experience benchmarks apply only to mobile search. Dozens of other mentions by Google fail to address the question. Bottom line: we simply don’t know whether the benchmarks (ranking signals) will eventually apply across the board. A final answer will probably not be clear at least until the rollout in May, 2021.

Will my website do poorly on Google if I do not follow Google benchmarks to the letter?

Not necessarily.  Life is full of trade-offs, and this applies to website managers, UX teams, and content strategists as well as everyone else in the world. It could be that a large display ad is too important to lose—for revenue, or for client retention for example. Google warns against this kind of ad, but your benefits may outweigh this. Google itself characterizes its benchmarks as “guidelines.” 

Interested in digging deeper into better content, design, and user experience?
Talk to an expert.

Footnotes:

1 In August, 2020, the search marketing agency Screaming Frog, published a lengthy report on tests that found only 12% of Mobile and 13% of Desktop results passed the Core Web Vitals assessment.

2 “Visual indicators on the results are another way to do the same, and we are working on one that identifies pages that have met all of the page experience criteria” Google search Central blog, November 10, 2020

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