Google is finally set to penalize slow-loading websites
Google will reward websites with refined user experiences
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Googlehas finally begun rolling out a much-feared tweak to its search engine that will penalize websites that are slow to load, by pushing them below other relevantwebsitesthat load faster.
Reporting on the announcement, theWall Street Journal(WSJ) says Google’s parent company Alphabet will roll out the newpage experience featureto all users by the end of August.
“It’s very rare that Google releases such a huge update for user experience. “It’s very rare that Google releases such a huge update for user experience,” Asaf Shamly, co-founder and chief executive of Browsi Mobile LLC, which uses artificial intelligence to optimize ad placement on publishers’ websites, told theWSJ.
When confronted with two websites with content relevant to the user’s query, the new feature will ensure that the website that loads faster and offers a better interaction experience, will be positioned higher in the search results.
Survival of the fittest
Google’s long-set criteria for rating websites relied on a website being mobile-friendly, using the securehttpsprotocol, and the prevalence of intrusive elements such as pop-ups.
Going forward, Google will also rate a website’s user experience based on three metrics, known across the industry ascore web vitals.
Despite beingannounced last year, a recentSEOresearch suggested that a majority of the popular sites couldsuffer a drop in their rankingsas they didn’t meet Google’s defined thresholds for the new criteria.
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A number of online businesses thatWSJspoke to were upbeat about the new changes as they had taken the lead time to ensure their website conform to the upcoming changes.
Calling the update a “wake-up call to publishers,” Shamly believes that whilee-commerce websiteshave focused on delivering a refined user experience to improve sales, content publishers usually rely on clunkyonline advertisements.
However, focusing solely on overloading the users with ads will now have a detrimental impact on their search engine ranking, which will result in less traffic and a decrease in revenue.
ViaWall Street Journal
With almost two decades of writing and reporting on Linux, Mayank Sharma would like everyone to think he’sTechRadar Pro’sexpert on the topic. Of course, he’s just as interested in other computing topics, particularly cybersecurity, cloud, containers, and coding.
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