During John’s 09/24/2021hangout, one webmaster was concerned that their site had been impacted by the page experience update.
They had experienced a change in their traffic and rankings after the page experience update was announced. They lost approximately 20 percent of their traffic.
John explained that this was less likely to be a part of the page experience update and that said drop was likely due to something else.
If the change was due to the page experience update, the drop would likely have been a slow one from July through now.
This exchange occurs at approximately the 14:36 mark in the video.
John Mueller 09/24/2021 Hangout Transcript
Yeah, hello, John. Well, after it was announced that the page experience update rolled out one our sites lost 20 percent of organic traffic. Core Web Vitals are not very bad. They are in the orange zone. Is it safe to suggest the site will regain traffic after we fix the issues with core web vitals? And also how long could it take? Do we need to wait some, maybe another huge update? And how do things in general work with Core Web Vitals and the algorithm from this point of view?
John 15:21
So you saw the change like immediately after it was finished or…?
Webmaster 3 15:27
Yes. After it was announced that the page experience update rolled out, like it was completed.
John 15:35
I don’t, I don’t think that would be related. So the reason I don’t think that would be related is because we started rolling this update out, I think, in July, and it was finished at the end of August. But the rollout was on a per-page basis, essentially. That means if we saw that your website was slow for Core Web Vitals, you would see a gradual change over time, from July until now. And if you see an exact drop on that date, it seems like it’s probably something else. So I don’t think that would be from the Core Web Vitals.
Webmaster 3 16:21
Mm hmm. Okay. And also, the gain would be also be gradual?
John 16:31
Yeah. Now, the updates take place automatically. So it’s something in Search Console, you will see the data is always delayed, I think 28 days, but it’s, it’s like, gradually updated. It’s not that it has to wait for a bigger update.
Webmaster 3 16:48
Okay. Thank you.
