Page experience has already been live in Google’s search results for six months, yet there are still more important details we are still to discover from Google.
In one of its blogs announcing the update, buried in the detail was a small sentence that could have huge consequences.
These are the words that caught our attention at the time and still do now:
“we plan to test a visual indicator that highlights pages in search results that have great page experience”
We don’t know more than anyone else about what this visual indicator could be, but let’s just imagine it might be a green tick, or a thumbs up emoji. Either way, it’s likely to be a strong incentive for searchers to click on those websites and not those who don’t. What would you click on – something with a nice welcoming “great website experience” sign or the one next to it without? The ramifications could be large. Could it halve traffic for websites without the visual indicator? Or worse? Could it double visitor numbers for those who are ready?
We don’t know the exact answers to the impact, but we do know this is something website owners should be working on with a lot of attention if they haven’t been already. Given the possibility Google could change its search results at any time, relegating sites which don’t meet the criteria, this is a classic case of indecision being a bad decision.
If this encourages you to want to know more about how to be ready, here’s a great starting point from industry legend, Neil Patel.
There’s lots you can do to help yourself, or of course there are lots of SEO agencies who can support you too. Either way though, with Page Experience and those little known few words buried in a Google blog, we strongly recommend doing the ground work now.
