November 2020 I (and Google) reported that Core Web Vitals would become a ranking factor. This week Google has announced that this has been delayed for several weeks.
Often, you might not be as relieved when something got delayed. But Core Web Vitals got delayed, giving us a bit more time:
We'll begin using page experience as part of our ranking systems beginning in mid-June 2021
developers.google.com
This used to be May 2021, although nobody seemed to know if it would be beginning or end of May.
The first announcement already was back in November 2020. This was to give everyone the time to adapt and improve, as Covid might have messed up schedules of most agencies and merchants already. But Google was actually also giving themselves some time to keep testing, monitoring and improving the metrics.
Although they already started tracking new metrics such as CLS and LCP as off a year before (November 2019), LCP got changed a few times and the CLS metric got a major update just recently.
But this new update came with a few other revelations and Google even made some changes. I will list a few.
Page experience update is being rolled out gradually
It is a rumor that has been circulating for some time. Especially in some leading podcasts, the experts already agreed, but now it has also been finally announced. Google indicates in their news release that the page experience update will be rolled out gradually starting mid-June to the end of August.
This means that the effect of complying or not complying with the Core Web Vitals on your SEO will be less severe. For the people who have only invested in this for SEO reasons, this may be a bitter pill. However, this should of course never be the main reason for complying with the Core Web Vitals. User experience, on the other hand, is!
Google will stop showing AMP badges
Where you now regularly see the AMP badges in the search results, this will no longer be the case from mid-June. Google has announced that with the introduction of the page experience update, the AMP badges will no longer be visible in Google Search.
Core Web Vitals visual indicator
This might clear the path for a new visual indicator when passing Core Web Vitals. Something they are still looking into to show in the search results which pages have a good page experience. To be continued…
New Page Experience report in Google Search Console
If you regularly check your GSC account, you may have seen it: Google Search Console has been expanded with a new Page Experience report. And it already looks stunning within the Google Search Console of one of our clients:
In this report you can easily see what percentage of impressions within your website or webshop is offering a good page experience to your visitors.
Not just Core Web Vitals
The report is based, among other things, on Core Web Vitals, but also on mobile friendliness, HTTPS security and safety issues. Not important for every website, but advertising functionality is also included in this report. Do note that the Google update also isn't just about Core Web Vitals, hence its name Page Experience update.
Pagespeed guidance
Need help guiding your development team? Pressure and deadlines shouldn't be the main motive to improve UX, but you would at least be in time. Just let me know if a pagespeed audit or pagespeed training is needed.
![Webshop pagespeed audit [Extended]](https://www.erwinhofman.com/file/upload/img/svg/thumb.audit-webshop.png)
