Google employees John Mueller, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt have recorded the next episode of the Search Off The Record podcast.
The new episode discusses issues such as the upcoming launch of a new Page Experience signal, how much weight it will have, and what role to play.
Gary Illyes said the new Page Experience signal will be a lot like HTTPS. This will also be the so-called “decisive factor”. In other words, if all other site parameters are comparable, but one of them provides the best user experience, then the choice will be made in favor of the latter.
When it comes to HTTPS, Google originally did not plan to make it a “deciding factor,” and it had a higher weight. However, after testing this signal, Google decided to reduce its weight as users did not find HTTPS pages more relevant than HTTP pages, says SearchEngines. So eventually this one turns into what it represents now.
NIX Solutions notes that all three experts also agreed that a ranking factor such as download speed would be better if it were also a “deciding factor.”
According to Gary Illyes, such factors are introduced more often than they should.
Main conclusions:
- The launch of the Experience page does not provide a radical impact on the search results, and the signal itself will act as a decisive factor;
- Injection of decisive factors like HTTPS and Page Experience happens more often than we think.