You may have already heard: Google is postponing the Core update 2021 until the end of August. The Page Experience update won't roll out until mid-June, meaning it won't go fully live until August. Google itself indicates that they have postponed this to give owners the opportunity to refine their website with the page experience in mind. 

What is already available?

The Google Core update is not yet live. However, a few minor updates have already been made to help website owners improve pages for the big update. The Page Experience becomes an important factor in assessing and therefore ranking websites. 

It is now possible to request a Page Experience report in Google Search Console. This report combines the well-known Core Web Vitals report with a number of other metrics that will be part of the new update. You can expect a Page Experience report to contain information about, among other things, the HTTPS, mobile friendliness, the degree of sliding elements (CLS), the loading time (LCP) and the speed at which an action leads to a response in the browser (FIP). 

In addition to the addition of these aspects, you can now also view various statistics. This allows you to see, among other things, the percentage of URLs with a good Page Experience and search impressions over time. In addition, it is possible to view per page where any improvements are needed. 

What will be available in June?

So what can we expect during the rollout in mid-June? First, the Top Stories carousel feature will be updated to include all news content, as long as that content meets Google News guidelines. In addition, the AMP badge will begin to remove. AMP is therefore no longer required to rank in Top Stories, but also no longer required for the Google News app or news.google.com. 

And finally: August

The full Page Experience update will be completed by the end of August. Then the statistics of the Core Web Vitals will be available: the LCP, FID and CLS. In addition, you will receive information about mobile-friendliness, Safe Browsing, HTTPS and the presence or absence of Intrusive Interstitials (pop-ups, banners and overlays that disrupt reading the content on the website). 

No drastic changes

The main goal of this update is to highlight pages with an excellent user experience. So don't expect drastic changes, according to Google. The Page Experience becomes and remains a factor that the systems take into account when ranking.