Law Firms & Businesses Rejoice: Google Delays Page Experience Deadline

Google Page Experience Algorithm Update Delayed Until August 2021

Google, for much of the last year, has been detailing how it plans to roll out a page experience update to its algorithm in May 2021 (read more about the deadline in this article).

To a lot of businesses’ relief, on Monday 26th of April 2021, Google made another announcement advising that the deadline has been moved to August 2021. This means that your law firms and / or business gets more time to become compliant with the new algorithm.

On Monday, Google confirmed on its developer blog  that they will be using Page Experience as part of their ranking systems from mid-June 2021. However, the Page Experience update won’t be fully implemented until the end of August.

In short, Google’s new plan is to make gradual changes rather one big change in May.

Google went on to reassure that publishers should not expect “drastic changes.” This takes pressure off many businesses which are not yet ready for the changes.

As Google has been saying since last year, the algorithm update will consider “Page Experience Signals,” based on the 3 Core Web Vitals metric. These are:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP),
• First Input Delay (FID),
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) (you can read more about this here).

The largest search engine provider confirmed that we can expect the change to come to their products as the algorithm update begins to roll out in mid-June. Furthermore, they will continue to test alternative ways to help identify content with a better user experience. More updates will follow.

Update to the Search Console

Another change will be the arrival of a new Page Experience report in the Google’s Search Console.

According to the tech giant, the report will combine the existing Core Web Vitals report with other components of the Page Experience Signals. These will include HTTPS security, absence of intrusive interstitials (intrusive pop-ups etc.), safe browsing status, and mobile-friendliness.

You will therefore be able to dig into the components of Page Experience Signal to gain further insights on where you can improve.

The report will also offer very valuable metrics. We can expect to see the percentage of URLs with good user experience and search impressions over time. These will enable you to quickly evaluate your business website’s performance.

Google also tells us they will be offering Signed Exchanges (SXG) on Google Search for all web pages, not just those built with AMP. AMP has long been controversial, with some arguing that it has entailed Google taking too much control over the web.

“Our vision for page experience is to build a web ecosystem that users love—together. We’re hard at work to make sure that you have the right tools and resources available before the ranking rollout starting in mid-June 2021,” said Google.

Have you already prepared your business website for the changes?

If you are not sure whether your website needs improving or not, get in touch with us. We are offering a free page experience audit.