Google Says Now The Page Experience Update Is More Than A Tie Breaker Ranking Factor

[SwatiSood]

Google's John Mueller said on Reddit this morning that the page experience update that incorporates core web vitals is more than a tie breaker ranking signal. He said "it is a ranking factor, and it's more than a tie-breaker, but it also doesn't replace relevance."

This is a surprise change of messaging because Google has implied that the page experience update is a tie breaker in the past. Gary Illyes from Google said the page experience update won't be drastic and might be more like a tie breaker signal than something really big. John Mueller of Google said this won't be a drastic update like other Google updates, he added it will be a slow rollout and not felt too much. Danny Sullivan of Google said it won't result in a m***ive change when rolled out.

[lisajohn]

Back in the early 2000’s Google used ranking factors tied to keywords to understand what a web page was about. Anchor text, number of links, keywords in headings and titles all helped web pages rank at the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Websites could acquire thousands of reciprocal links and do the on-page SEO and rank at the top.

But that was before natural language processing, advanced machine learning and AI technologies put a stronger emphasis on relevance signals.

[Guest]

Google Says Now The Page Experience Update Is More Than A Tie Breaker Ranking Factor. ... John Mueller of Google said this won't be a drastic update like other Google updates, he added it will be a slow rollout and not felt too much. Danny Sullivan of Google said it won't result in a m***ive change when rolled out.