Why Google's Latest Update Supposedly Keeps Users Happy & Rankings High - B&T

Google’s latest algorithm change which focuses on page experience should be a wake up call to marketers wanting to maintain their website rankings, writes Alex Whalley, SEO Director at digital marketing agency, Tug….

How a consumer experiences a brand or business website is more important than ever. According to smallbizgenius, 53% of visitors to a mobile website will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load, while 88% of online shoppers say they wouldn’t return to a website after having a bad user experience.

The number of users turned off by bad user experience and slow loading pages also adds up to significant amounts of lost sales and leads. Research has shown that better user experience (UX) can increase a website’s conversion rate by 200%, and better UX design can yield conversion rates of up to 400%. These numbers should be a wake up call for marketers and those responsible for website design.

Google’s roll out in March of the desktop version of its page experience update – an algorithm change that puts more focus on how an end user experiences a website – has made this even more critical.

While the mobile version of this update was rolled out in May last year, this latest version for desktop simply underlines the importance of ensuring a website is optimised for the end user, across all devices.

Then and Now

Page experience was previously based on four signals which told Google how good the user experience on a website was. They were:

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