Google updated their FAQ on their Core Web Vitals metrics and page experience update. This page can be accessed on Google’s support forums and was initially published in December 2020, but now it was updated with a lot more details.
It was updated quite a bit compared to the original version. You can compare the old with the new by scanning both documents. Malte Ubl, technical software engineer at Google, said on Twitter, “We published a FAQ on Google’s page experience rankings answering questions like: where does the Core Web Vitals data come from? How do you calculate a score for a URL that was recently published and didn’t yet generate 28 days of data?” and many more.”
“In December last year, we published a set of FAQs about Core Web Vitals and Page Experience based on the questions you wanted us to answer. We received a lot of positive feedback and many wrote to us saying they found the answers useful. In the meantime, we are back with more answers to the questions we received. We organized the questions in this post into three sections – Metrics and Tools, Page Experience and Search, and AMP. We hope you find it useful,” Google said.
The one major item that catches the eye is how Google will continue to rank the most relevant content despite how poorly it might do with its top web vitals scores. “Our systems will continue to prioritize pages with the best overall information, even if some aspects of the page experience are unsatisfactory. A good page experience does not negate having excellent and relevant content,” Google added.
Google also said that those pages are still “eligible for the Top Stories carousel if the website does not clear Core Web Vitals.” With Google’s page experience update in May, everyone is gearing up to ensure that sites go green with this update. We’re not sure how big this ranking factor will be, but even if it’s a small ranking factor, making these changes to the user experience on a site can help make them happier and potentially increase conversion rates and site performance.