Google Makes A Rare Announcement About Its Web Vitals

In a rare announcement by search engine giant Google about future changes to its crawling algorithm, core web vitals were mentioned, thus leaving quite a few search engine optimization professionals slightly confused about what this really means. Web Vitals is Google initiative that was introduced in early May; it is a set of metrics that focus on two key aspects of user experience: responsive design and visual balance.

Core web vitals are expected to become ranking signals evaluated by the algorithm coded into the Google search crawler. It should be noted that Google does not make this kind of announcement very often; the company has always been very secretive about this topic, and the SEO community has to figure out how the algorithm works in order to help their clients.

Something else that is unusual in relation to Google's announcement is that it is being made with substantial advance notice. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has delayed quite a few projects that Google was working on, and this one should be included in that list of postponed items. Web vitals as Google ranking signals will be implemented at some point in 2021, and the company will give everyone a heads-up notice six months prior to making the change in the algorithm.

It will be up to SEO professionals to become informed about the web metrics that Google will consider as vital ranking signals. This isn't an entirely new concept in the history of the Google search engine algorithm; back in 2014, for example, the mobile search engine results page displayed a label for websites that were optimized for smartphones and tablets, and it did not take long before these labels became ranking factors.

The metrics Google will be implementing next year are apparently based on industry data and research studies. User experience testing is something that Google has widely applied during development of the Android operating system, so it is not surprising to learn that this strategy now extends to the search engine algorithm, which happens to be the bread and butter of the company's sizeable revenues. There's no question about the strong need by SEO practitioners to become familiar with these metrics as they are developed. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/gslm6n/haveyouseenthisannouncementyesterdayby/.