Since August, Google has been using a “page experience” metric to determine how websites appear in mobile Search. Page experience ranking is now coming to the desktop version of Google Search from February 2022.
Page speed and other experience metrics that quantify how an end user interacts with a website is now one of Google’s preferred methods for determining how to rank results in Search. Page experience incorporates speed (load time), responsiveness (interactivity), and visual stability — e.g., tapping the wrong button due to a site unexpectedly moving during loading. Those three Core Web Vitals provide a “holistic picture of the quality of a user’s experience on a web page.”
It’s been leveraged on mobile Search since August, and is now coming to desktop. Google will continue to factor to “HTTPS Security” and “Absence of intrusive interstitials,” but “Mobile friendliness” does not apply:
When a site has separate desktop and mobile URLs with an appropriate configuration, the desktop signal is based on the URLs that desktop users see.
Google will provide desktop tools before the page experience rollout starts in February 2022. This update is set to be widely available by the end of March.
We are also planning to help site owners understand how their desktop pages are performing with regards to page experience using a Search Console report which will launch before desktop becomes a ranking signal.
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