Google’s page experience update coming to desktop next month

Malte Ubl, a Software Engineer at Google, reminded us that coming next month, Google will be releasing the desktop version of the page experience update. He posted this on Twitter as a reminder:

Google told us this was coming this past November and it should go live next month. The rollout will take a couple months, it will start in February 2022 and finish rolling out by the end of March 2022. This update will include all the current signals of the mobile version of the page experience update, outside of the page needing to be mobile friendly.

Same thresholds. As a reminder, the same metric thresholds will work for desktop. So what the thresholds were for mobile, will be the same for desktop. The original blog post said “the same three Core Web Vitals metrics: LCP, FID, and CLS, and their associated thresholds will apply for desktop ranking.” Malte Ubl reconfirmed this in his tweet saying “metric threshold are the same as on mobile.”

Don’t expect drastic changes. Google said with this rollout and this new Google update, do not expect drastic changes. “While this update is designed to highlight pages that offer great user experiences, page experience remains one of many factors our systems take into account… Given this, sites generally should not expect drastic changes,” said Google. We expect the same to be true for the desktop rollout.

Search Console tools any day now. Google will be updating the Google Search Console tools and reports to help site owners prepare for this update. “We are also planning to help site owners understand how their desktop pages are performing with regards to page experience using a Search Console report which will launch before desktop becomes a ranking signal,” Google said. So expect these new tools and reports to be released any day now.

Mobile vs desktop. Which factors is will be included in this desktop version? Google said all of them with the exception of the mobile friendliness requirement, which is kind of obvious. Here is a chart Google designed showing the specific factors:

Why we care. As I said last time, while I do not believe this page experience update will be a significant update where you will see tons of sites see their rankings drastically change, those working towards improving their page experience have been primarily focused on their mobile pages. Now, that you have your mobile pages ready for this update, you can shift focus towards your desktop pages.

The new reports are not out yet, but I hope they will be out shortly.

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