Google is now postponing the Google Page Experience Update. Google announced it is moving it from launching next month to launching between mid-June and the end of August. Some small items are launching now, some are rolling out in mid-June and the rest will take through the end of August to rollout. Here is what is changing and when.
Live Today:
- New Page Experience report in Google Search Console
- Signed exchanges for all web pages
Mid-June:
- Google Page Experience Update ranking changes begins to rollout slowly and gradually (note, it won't finish rolling out until the end of August)
- AMP is no longer a requirement for eligibility for the Top Stories Carousel; again, this starts in mid-June but won't be fully live until the end of August
- AMP icon/label should go away here I believe
- Google will continue to test a page experience / core web vitals label but no decision has been made on if it will stick or not
End of August:
- Google Page Experience Update ranking update will be fully live
- AMP is no longer a requirement for eligibility for the Top Stories Carousel will be fully live
Why the change? Google said it "hopes that this adjusted roll-out schedule will help you continue to make refinements to your website with page experience in mind."
Is there some big conspiracy thing going on? John said it is normal big company issues:
It's not uncommon for timelines to be adjusted & pushed back a bit - often more than one thing comes together. At big companies, a lot of things come together, both from internally & externally. #NoConspiracy
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 19, 2021
Google doubled down on that this won't be a huge change, Google said "as we have said before, 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. In addition, because we’re doing this as a gradual rollout, we will be able to monitor for any unexpected or unintended issues."
The signed exchanges thing is where Google can support publishers real URLs instead of the AMP cache URL. Google did add "The use of SXG is not a requirement for page experience benefits, and you can consider the technology as one of the options for improving your page experience."
Also, just a reminder, you do not need to meet the core web vitals to be in top stories and those also do not need to be AMP. Google said "the 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.
Here is a nifty chart that Google came out with to explain what is part of this Google Page Experience update:
So we got more time to deal with this, plus new reports, which I wrote about over here.
Here is a poll from Izzi Smith asking the industry if they are relieved or eager - as with all SEO polls, the results are mixed.
Google just postponed the Page Experience Update from May to mid-June (and it will be a very gradual rollout). Are you a bit relieved or just eager to get it over and done with now?
— Izzi Smith (@izzionfire) April 19, 2021
Sorry if you all rushed to get ready for it, but it doesn't really hurt either way, right?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
