What is the Google Page Experience Update?

What is the Google Page Experience Update?

In May 2021 Google will roll out a major update known as the Page Experience Update. In this update Google include page experience signals, when interacting with your Shopify store, in their search rankings.

What is Page Experience?
This refers to to the users perception when they are browsing your store. Factor which are measured include speed, mobile friendliness and site security. These factors will now all influence your Shopify store ranking in Google search results. 

Google Page Experience Update

How does this impact your Shopify store?
For Shopify store owners it's the quality of the browsing experience that is important.  Here are some examples which may give your potential customers a poor experience:

  • Will the user enjoy browsing your Shopify store?
  • Do you have excess pop-ups for email collection, cookies or spin the wheel promotions?
  • Are there images overlaying text which makes it hard to read on mobile?
These are all factors which will influence your ranking in search results. 

You can start preparing for this new page experience update by analysing your core web vitals report in Google Search console.

Beware of 'Intrusive Interstitials'
Let's face it, Shopify store owners love pop ups :) Google refers to these as 'Intrusive Interstitials'. While desktop interstitials can be easily closed or ignored Google takes these very seriously if they impact the mobile browsing experience. 

We are seeing mobile traffic top 80% for many Shopify stores so as a store owner, you need to be mindful that any interruption of browsing experience will affect your ranking. Especially on mobile.

Here is the official update page on Google.