Each year Google makes hundreds of changes to its searching facility, but it has around 4 key updates known as ‘core updates’. These updates are bigger and they often bring in a range of new ranking factors. In this week’s blog, we’re telling you about Google’s new ranking factor that is expected to arrive in 2021.
Google has revealed one of their new updates for 2021, which is using page experience as a ranking factor for the search engine results page (SERP). As we know, page experience can already have detrimental effects to the success of a website, if your website doesn’t function well, it’s unlikely that you’ll be ranking at the top of the SERP. Thanks to Google’s upcoming algorithm, everyone is likely to have a better time using Google, as the results will be more accurate and good quality.
This new algorithm update will be powered by web vitals, which are tools that Google uses to measure the performance of websites. Each year, Google can change the metrics that they are using to measure the performance of sites, in this case the web vitals are: LCP, FID & CLS.
Google will rate the websites on three different factors, these are:
- How fast the most important part of the page loads on a screen?
- How fast does the website respond to user requests?
- Are the loading screens stable?
So what are these web vitals?
Now, Google will use their web vitals to measure these factors and here’s how:
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
This metric will measure how long it takes for images and text to appear on the screen. This metric isn’t interested in how long it takes the whole screen to load, just the most important part of the content.
FIS (First Input Delay)
This metric will measure the length of time it takes for content to appear from when the user requested it. People expect things to appear at the click of a button and if they don’t appear fast, it’s an indicator that your site is not very responsive.
CLS (Content Layout Shift)
This metric measures the visual stability on your site, which is whether there are things moving around on the loading screen, such as adverts.
While these are the core web vitals for measuring page experience, there are many others that work behind the scenes to test the performance of your site and how people respond to it. Google is telling you to specifically focus your attention on the scores that you receive for these areas of your site, that’s how you’ll know if you need to make improvements.
Make sure you stay up to date with any changes to Google’s algorithm, as they are extremely important to the ranking of your site on the SERP.
If you need any further assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us.