John Mueller of Google discussed different scenarios for how page experience ranking factors may and may not affect rankings. It didn’t downplay the importance of Core Web Vitals (CWV) as a ranking factor, but rather added context for the types of situations in which the Page Experience ranking factor makes a difference and examples of why it should be mitigated.
Muller’s answer is extensive and touches on many interesting topics.
How important is the primary ranking factor for web basics?
The question Mueller answered in a recent Google Office Hours video was an answer to someone who indicated that his website had recently gone down due to what he believed to be the effect of Core Web Vitals’ ranking signal.
The person asking the question wanted to know how vital the basic web is as a ranking factor.
this is the question:
“My website has seen a decrease in the number of visitors due to the weakening of the basic vital elements of the web.
Now I’m back on track but I’ve realized the page experience refresh is now rolling out to desktop as well.
What is Page Experience Rank on desktop and how important is it compared to other ranking factors? “
John Mueller discusses the page experience ranking factor
When the ranking factor does not help the ranking
John Mueller started his answer by talking about how Google doesn’t implement the page experience ranking factor.
This is an interesting answer because one thinks about ranking factors as always but Mueller offers a scenario where the ranking factor is “diluted” in order to provide the correct search result.
But Mueller shows an example of a situation where this ranking factor is put aside to give a Google user what they’re looking for.
John Mueller provided this example:
So, just like on mobile, the page experience ranking factor is basically something that gives us a little bit more information about these different pages that can show up in search results.
And in situations where we have a strong, clear kind of intent from the query, where we can understand that they really want to go to that website, then from that point of view, we can kind of mitigate using the experience of the page as a ranking factor. “
This is interesting because it’s easy to think of SERPs as ten links to sites arranged by ranking factors.
But there are many things that affect why a site ranks and this is an example of how ranking factors can be excluded for certain reasons.
When the page experience reference helps
Mueller then explains how the Page Experience Rank signal works.
He has said previously that this ranking signal is not a tiebreaker.
Now provides an example of the type of scenario where a ranking signal kicks in and helps a site rank better.
On the other hand, if all the content is very similar on a search results page, then using Page Experience can probably help a bit in understanding which of these are fast or reasonable pages in terms of user experience and which are kind of the least logical pages to display in search results. .
And that kind of attitude helps us there.”
Updating the desktop page experience won’t cause drastic changes
Mueller then talks about the desktop version of the Page Experience update that was announced on February 22, 2022 and that Google announced will be completed on March 3, 2022.
He says he thinks the startup will take about a month.
However, his statements were made only three days after the update was announced and the video itself was not released until two days after the update ended.
John Mueller’s estimate of how long the update will take must be considered in the context in which it was made, which was an estimate rather than a definitive statement.
Mueller focuses on ranking changes from the page experience ranking factor on desktop and says that publishers shouldn’t see significant changes in ranking because of this ranking factor.
John explains:
“So from that point of view with desktop ranking changing, as with mobile, I wouldn’t expect a big jump in search results from one day to the next when we roll this out.
At most, if things are really bad for your website, you’ll see some kind of gradual decline there.”
I think the catch is that if publishers experienced “dramatic” changes in search results during the rollout of the Page Experience update for desktop, it would be a mistake to assume those changes were related to the update.
Websites don’t fall from weak core web vitals
Mueller next addresses “the vitality of the basic web” in the context of understanding why a site falls short in search results.
The point he is making is that a basic web vitality ranking signal may be responsible for small changes but it is not the kind of signal that would lead to a big change.
Mueller continued his answer:
“The other thing I would kind of warn you about is kind of the first sentence you had there, that your website went down because of weak Core Web Vitals.
I suspect, for the most part, that websites won’t see much visual change when it comes to Core Web Vitals.
Even if your website goes from being reasonable to being in this weak bucket of Core Web Vitals from day to day, I don’t expect to see that as some kind of giant change in search results.
Maybe some attitude change, and that sounds kind of right there.
But I wouldn’t see it as a page going from… I don’t know… second place to 50th like that just because of Core Web Vitals.
If you see a drastic change like that, I wouldn’t just focus on Core Web Vitals.
I’ll try to take a step back and look at the big picture and see what else could be there.
And try to see what you can do to improve things in general instead of just focusing solely on Core Web Vitals.
Because Core Web Vitals is something that takes a lot of work to get right.
Sometimes it can be difficult to arrange all of these things.
But it’s also, as you mentioned, something that’s an accurate rank factor rather than a superpowered one.
So if you’re seeing strong changes, I’d recommend not spending too much time on the Core Web Vitals side and instead trying to figure out the biggest change or where that’s coming from for your site.”
The takeaway about page experience as a ranking factor
John Mueller provided multiple insights in his answer:
- A page experience ranking factor is “softened” when a searcher expects to see a particular website
- The page experience ranking factor is useful when multiple sites have similar answers
- Refreshing Desktop Page Experience is not responsible for major ranking changes
- Core Web Vitals is not responsible for massive ranking changes
- Basic Web Liveliness may affect small changes in ranking
the quote
How basic web animation works as a ranking factor
Watch the video at the 42:21 minute mark
