Google is now rolling out the page experience update, Google said the rollout is happening very slowly and will take place through the end of August 2021.
The announcement. Google said on Twitter “the page experience update is now slowly rolling out (Top Stories will begin using this new signal by Thursday). It will be complete by the end of August 2021.”
Top stories. Starting Thursday, June 17, Google will start using the page experience signals for eligibility into the top stories carousel and section.
Don’t expect huge ranking changes. As a reminder, you should not expect huge ranking changes in Google Search for this release. This will be a slow rollout and Google originally said do not expect drastic changes. “While this update is designed to highlight pages that offer great user experiences, page experience remains one of many factors our systems take into account… Given this, sites generally should not expect drastic changes,” said Google.
Delayed. The original launch was delayed to now, but is now rolling out. Here is the general timeline for this rollout:
Mid-June rollout. So what is rolling out now with the page experience update?
- The ranking change will begin gradually rolling out.
- AMP badge will begin to go away
- Possible page experience badge will continue to be tested but Google has not finalized plans for this badge.
- Top Stories carousel feature on Google Search will be updated to include all news content, as long as it meets the Google News content policies and guidelines. AMP is no longer required here to rank in certain top stories. Google also clarified that this is “irrespective of its Core Web Vitals score or page experience status.” This change will begin in mid-June as well and finish by the end of August.
- AMP also not required for the Google News app nor news.google.com.
- I suspect HTTPS, mobile-friendly, safe browsing and no intrusive interstitials will be part of the mid-June rollout, as Google already has these are ranking signals prior to the page experience announcement.
End of August rollout. Google said it will finish and complete the full rollout of the page experience update ranking change by the end of August. This will include all the core web vital metrics, such as LCP, FID, and CLS (as well as Chrome’s recent fix to CLS), as well as the ones listed below.
Reminder, this is what is in the new page experience update includes and this will begin rolling out in mid-June and complete rolling out by the end of August. It will not be live in May 2021 as previously announced.
Do not confuse with core updates. Do not confuse the page experience update, that uses core web vitals as a signal, with core updates. They are unrelated and do not influence each other. In fact, the June 2021 core update just finished rolling out on June 12. The core updates are felt more in terms of ranking fluctuations by sites in Google Search than would this page experience update.
Why we care. Most of you have been waiting for this update to rollout for now over a year. It is now rolling out. Again, do not expect big ranking changes from this rollout and do not confuse it with ranking changes due to the core update we had in June and the core update we are expecting in July.
About The Author
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.