This update expands on a few key details from the November 2020 page experience ranking change update. Google announced the page experience update will consider several signals, including three Core Web Vitals (CWV) metrics: Longest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Additionally, the Top Stories carousel feature on Google Search will be updated to include all news content, as long as it meets Google News policies. This announcement means using the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) format is no longer required, and any page will be eligible to appear in the Top Stories carousel.
Google also announced the introduction of the Page Experience report that can be found in Google Search Console. This report provides more actionable insights into your overall page experience based on metrics such as CWV, HTTPS security, absence of intrusive interstitials and mobile friendliness.
The last part of this update includes Google’s announcement of the general availability of signed exchanges (SXG) on Google Search for all web pages. Previously, Google Search only supported SXG built within the AMP framework. SXG allows Google Search to leverage the privacy-preserving prefetching technique in compatible browsers, which can lead to improved page experience.
What This Update Means For SERPs
With the increase in updates regarding page experience, it is clear Google is holding quality content to a higher standard, requiring that the content not only contains helpful information, but also meets CWV best practices. Google appears to be focusing more on overall page experience and is judging this through a variety of metrics. This means it is more important than ever for marketers to ensure their website is technically sound and search engines can easily crawl the content without running into page load issues.