There is some current news from Google that should be of interest to webmasters of all kinds. Coming soon, a new ranking factor will be introduced: experience. The user is in the limelight here since it is user experience that is the focus of this new ranking factor. This includes signals on the loading speed of the website, mobile-friendliness, and HTTPS security. Starting in 2021, the new update is to be one of Google’s basic building blocks, but Google will make an announcement early enough to allow webmasters to prepare for these changes in time.
With this new update, Google continues toward its goal to improve user experience, also called UX, as much as possible. In addition, answers to user search queries need to be continually improved upon. The Experience Signals are a good indicator to use for this. Google’s developments, Web Vitals and Core Web Vitals, help webmasters to check their ranking signals and also discover opportunities for improvement. These values can be tracked in the Chrome User Experience Report.
It will be interesting for webmasters to see how this affects the top stories. Since mobile search will also be affected by the update, the need for AMP stories will be eliminated, since these will no longer have to be published in order to land in the top stories. So optimizing the user experience as much as possible is crucial since website loading difficulties would then have an immediate negative effect on the ranking.
However, this update is not the last of what’s planned. It is only one of many that are to follow in order to further optimize user experience and to define SEO-relevant signals.
If you want to be on the safe side right now and be informed about the new changes as early as possible, you can use the Google tools Lighthouse or Page Speed Insights. For now, there is enough time to help websites and companies safely through the pandemic and to prepare for the upcoming changes.
