Google Search Console Drops Page Experience Report, Mobile Usability Report & Mobile-Friendly Tests: What You Need to Know

The Overview

Google has recently announced that it will be dropping its Page Experience Report, Mobile Usability Report, and Mobile-Friendly tests from the Google Search Console. These tools have long been considered essential for website owners and SEO professionals to improve website performance and user experience. 

From Dec 2023 onwards, Google will be retiring Search Console "Mobile Usability" report. It means neither the Tool nor the API would be available to perform the test. 

In April 2023, Google announced algorithmic changes to their SEO guidelines. Let's take a deep dive to understand the same.

What is Page Experience Report

The Page Experience Report provided website owners and SEO professionals with valuable insights into how users experience their websites. It provided information about page loading speed, mobile-friendliness, security, and more. These insights were used to improve website performance and user experience.

In 2021 the Google Search Console has started providing page experience data for Mobile sites and in 2022 they have also added desktop to this list. But now in 2023 Google said that they will remove this page completely and will create a new page, in their words

In the coming months, the Page Experience report within Search Console will transform into a new page that links to our general guidance about page experience and a dashboard view of the individual Core Web Vitals and HTTPS reports that will remain in Search Console.

This announcement has created a buzz in the SEO community as these reports were widely used to monitor website performance and identify areas for improvement. Many website owners and SEO professionals are wondering how to continue monitoring and improving website performance without these tools.

What is Mobile Usability Report

The Mobile Usability Report and Mobile-Friendly tests currently widely used to improve website performance and user experience. These tools provides information about how well a website performing on mobile devices, including loading speed and mobile-friendliness.

In one of its articles, Google said they had supported Mobile Usability for over a decade. They stated that many other robust tools are now available, like "Lighthouse", to test websites for Mobile devices. But at the same time, they have also stated, 

"This doesn't mean that mobile usability isn't essential for success with Google Search. It remains critical for users, who are using mobile devices more than ever, and as such, it remains a part of our page experience guidance."

An update on Signals

In the context of Google SEO, "signals" refer to various factors or indicators that Google's search algorithm considers when determining the relevance and quality of a web page or website. These signals are used to determine how well a web page or website will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs) for a given query.

Google also emphasized "Signals" for SEO; they said there is no any Single Page Experience Signal factor that helps a web page rank. Instead, there are a variety of signals like Passing CWVs, HTTPs, No intrusive interstitials etc., which may or may not be used directly to inform ranking. 

What will happen to Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are a set of specific factors related to user experience on a web page, that Google considers to be critical in determining the quality of a website. These factors measure page load time, interactivity, and visual stability, and are considered key indicators of how well a web page performs in terms of user experience.

Google also emphasized Core Web Vitals, stating, 

"We highly recommend site owners achieve good Core Web Vitals for success with Search and to ensure a great user experience generally." 

You can now check your web page Core Web Vitals 6 month history for free to understand the page experience trend. You can learn more about Core Web Vitals here

How to Continue Monitoring Mobile Friendliness Test?

We retrospected the whole update and tried to understand the reason for this update, and one thing which we have realised is, there are plenty of tools available in the market to test Mobile Friendliness test. As per Google,

Robust tools like "Lighthouse" are now available to test websites for Mobile devices. 

You can also perform Mobile Usability Testing on Auditzy as we have a spectrum of Mobile Devices Available. 

Auditzy  is built on top of Lighthouse  to provide a pool of features which is not possible with Lighthouse. You can read more about comparison here.

Summary

Looking at the current update, the website needs not only to be faster and visually stable but also requires useful contentwhich results to better User Experience for website visitors.

With best-in-class Synthetic Monitoring tools like Auditzy™, it's never been easier to understand website health and the repercussions of having good/bad performance for you as well as your competitors

With more than 5000+ visitor personas to choose from you can now understand the impact of performance on your business. 

If you like this article, share it across your network, and stay ahead in the website speed game.

Auditzy Provides a 14-days Free Trial for Synthetic monitoring to test website performance across 5000+ visitor personas.