The Google Page Experience Report: What’s In It, And Why It Matters

Will I Get Penalized for a Poor Score?

While Google isn’t directly penalizing sites at this point, it’s a penalty in it’s own right if a competitor knocks you out key rankings because their site is clearly optimized to perform. Most of these revolve around your content, how it is loading in, and have you done enough to keep it from slowing your site down.

Some of these signals can in fact already set your site up for penalty, so it’s not like the truth is wholly transparent. Largest Contentful Paint loading in for a longer time frame can definitely get you a failing score in Page Speed Insights.

Another thing to note: Google doesn’t always penalize a site for an update today, but down the road, these factors may become cause for penalization and ultimately loss in ranking.

In the world of search competition, every advantage is a bonus, and every time you don’t leverage an advantage, you are basically at a penalty.

So again, to address the question of penalty – will Google penalize you for not getting a strong enough score? Not necessarily, but your competitors certainly will.

What Are the Signals to Consider?

Google actually provides that

What Next and What Does This Mean for My SEO?

First, run these reports and review them in search console. Head down to your local dev team (or hire ours!) and discuss what can be done to optimize for page experience (you should be doing this anyway) and ensure that your site is really working for your users.

The best way to impact SEO is to ensure that users are liking the information you are providing on your site more than others, and if they do, typically, Google will rank your content better. A great way to ensure that your content matters is to ensure your technology creates a “delightful” experience (google’s words, not mine).

Spend some time with these considerations, because a reward today is a penalty tomorrow – with Google, that’s the only guarantee.