If you haven’t been keeping up with the latest news from Google (which you should be), you may be missing crucial information about the Google page experience update.
In atypical fashion, on Monday Google announced that they are pushing back the release timeline for their long-awaited page experience update.
Be sure to check out our previous post about what you should expect when the update goes live.
In November 2020, Google initially announced that their massive page experience update would be released in May, 2021.
To the surprise of everyone who has been anticipating this release for the past 6 months, Google has said they are delaying the release of the update until the middle of June.
Basically, there is going to be a gradual rollout of the page experience release beginning in mid-June of 2021.
Google explained:
We’ll begin using page experience as part of our ranking systems beginning in mid-June 2021. However, page experience won’t play its full role as part of those systems until the end of August. You can think of it as if you’re adding a flavoring to a food you’re preparing. Rather than add the flavor all at once into the mix, we’ll be slowly adding it all over this time period.
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.
What’s happening as of April 19, 2021 is the release of a new page experience report in Google Search Console, along with signed exchanges for all web pages.
Come mid-June, we can expect the following changes:
Google’s page experience update will begin to roll out slowly and gradually, eventually finishing the final rollout by the end of August 2021.
Closer to the end of August, Google’s page experience update will be entirely live in the index.
Also, AMP will no longer be a requirement for eligibility in the Top Stories Carousel. This is also a change that will be rolling out slowly from June through the end of August.
Google’s Page Experience Update is Coming Later Than Expected
Make no mistake, Google’s page experience update is still on the way. It’s just not arriving until later in the year.
That being said, we recommend that you still take every opportunity to retrofit your site properly for the coming update.
Once it rolls out, you will want to have already improved your website’s page experience.
