Page Experience Update For Desktop Search Results
Back in November 2021, Google announced their plans for bringing the Page Experience update to Desktop search results. Now, the rollout for this update is quickly approaching. The rollout is to begin in February 2022, and is expected to be fully completed by March 2022. In both cases, Google will announce the rollout and the completion of the roll out on their Google Search Central account.
But what will this update actually do, and who is affected? Read on as I look to explain the Page Experience Update for Desktop Results and answer your questions in this blog.
What will this update change?
This update is simply incorporating ranking signals that are already live for mobile search results. Google had already launched Page Experience as an update back in June 2021, but this update only impacted mobile search results. By the end of March, desktop search results will also begin ranking websites with these same page experience signals.
The Page Experience signals themselves will be the infamous Core Web Vitals, HTTPS Security, and Absence of Intrusive Interstitials (annoying pop up ads, for example.)
You can read Google’s full guide on Page Experience signals here.
How big of an impact will this update have?
Google has consistently reminded people that the original Page Experience update was very minor and page experience as a ranking signal is pretty much only a tie-breaker. Google has again told us that this Page Experience update will be the same, in that desktop search results are very unlikely to see any major changes as a result of this update. Just because your website is faster doesn’t mean your content is better – good content will remain the key ranking factor in the search results.
Despite Google’s own announcements of how small of a ranking signal this will be, we can expect to see numerous SEO’s promote hysteria about website speeds just like they did in the previous page experience update.
Will my website be affected?
It is very unlikely that your business website will see any ranking shifts because of its website speed. If you already know that your website is considerably slow to load, you should already be looking to fix that for the sake of your users.
You can also check your page experience signals in the Google Search Console report. Currently (as of 12th January) this is only available for mobile signals – but Google does plan to implement a report for desktop page experience signals before the update starts to roll out.
Update: Google has now added the desktop page experience report for your Search Console properties. You can view this report by clicking here.
Conclusion
To conclude:
- The page experience update for desktop search results is set to roll out in February 2022.
- It is expected to take around 1 month to complete.
- You can view your page experience signals in your Google Search Console account.
- These new signals will be very small and mostly a tie breaker – you should not expect massive ranking changes for your websites.
