Google confirms that the page experience refresh has finished rolling out to desktop search results. Now is the time to assess the impact.
The update began rolling out to the desktop on February 22, which takes nine days to roll out and expire on March 3.
By comparison, launching the Page Experience Refresh on mobile took two and a half months to complete.
With Google announcing the conclusion of its desktop rollout, you can begin to assess the impact on your search rankings.
The page experience is now fully rolled out to desktop.
– Google Search Center (googlesearchc) March 3, 2022
Update Desktop Page Experience – Evaluate Impact
Positive or negative shifts in desktop search rankings that occurred on or after March 3 can be attributed to the Google Page experience update.
To determine if this is the case, use Google tools to analyze your site’s page experience score.
Google Search Console contains a report specifically for evaluating page experience standards on desktop versions of web pages.
Use the Search Console report to understand how refreshing the page experience affects your site.
If the report shows the majority of your pages as red or yellow, any rank drop that occurs on March 3rd is likely caused by being negatively affected by the page experience refresh.
If you discover that your website has poor page experience results, the next step is to find out why by researching the criteria individually.
Standards refresh desktop page experience
Refreshing Google’s page experience for desktop search includes many of the same ranking factors as the algorithm that launched in mobile search last year.
Ranking factors for the desktop page experience include:
- Basic Web Fundamentals (LCP + CLS + FID)
- HTTPS security
- No intrusive interstitial ads
Screenshot from developer.google.com/search/blog, November 2021.If your website fails to meet any of the above criteria, you will not benefit from the improved Page Experience Rank on desktop.
A lower ranking does not mean that your site is being penalized for not meeting Google’s page experience criteria.
This means that sites that meet Google’s criteria may end up ranking above you, which will cause your pages to rank lower.
Therefore, improving your page’s experience score can help you regain those ranking positions and keep it competitive.
It’s easy to narrow down which page experience refresh element you need to focus on.
- Is your site HTTPS? If yes, you can rule that out.
- Does your site contain intrusive ads? If the answer is no, you can rule that out.
- Does your site go beyond the “basic web basics”? If you are not sure, you will have to test it.
Google’s Web Essentials report in Search Console shows how your pages perform for each metric using real-world data.
Core Web Vitals analysis is built into many other Google tools, such as PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, and Chrome DevTools.
There’s even a Chrome extension you can download to check Core Web Vitals on a page-by-page basis.
Use these tools to identify pages that need further optimization to meet Google’s Page Experience standards.
- For more instructions, see: How do you measure vital web fundamentals.
It’s important to note that page experience isn’t everything.
You will not automatically rank better with your green page experience results, nor will you automatically be harmed by this update if your score is at the bottom.
In the end, content relevance always wins. But it also helps deliver good page experiences.
Featured image: rawf8/Shutterstock
