Google’s page experience update set a new benchmark for creating user-friendly websites.
It highlighted the growing importance of performance and usability in SEO by emphasizing Core Web Vitals, responsive design and minimal intrusive elements.
This article traces the evolution of the algorithm update and its integration with other Google priorities, such as the helpful content update and practical steps to align with these standards in 2025.
An introduction to the page experience update
Google’s page experience update, which went live in June 2021 and fully rolled out by February 2022, represented a pivotal moment in the company’s ongoing commitment to improving web usability.
Building on a legacy of user-focused initiatives – such as the 2012 page layout algorithm, which targeted sites with excessive above-the-fold ads – this update refined Google’s approach to user-centric design, placing greater emphasis on tangible metrics and performance benchmarks.
Ahead of its implementation, Google provided detailed guidance in April 2021, signaling significant changes on the horizon.
Central to the update was the introduction of Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics designed to measure key aspects of user experience, such as page loading speed and interactivity.
This shift also marked the gradual deprecation of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) as a requirement for top search results.
Notably, one of the initial Core Web Vitals, First Input Delay (FID), has since been replaced by Interaction to Next Paint (INP).
Recently, Google removed the page experience report in Search Console to reduce clutter and simplify navigation.
From the start, the page experience update communicated a clear directive: webpages must be responsive, accessible and user-friendly.
The question remains: How has this update evolved over time?
The evolution of the page experience update
Since 2021, direct updates from Google explicitly focused on the page experience update have been sparse, creating something of a “black hole” regarding its standalone evolution.
However, Google has continued referencing “page experience” in subsequent updates.
This documentation, originally published in 2021 and updated in April 2023, helps us understand the evolution of the page experience update:
Between 2021 and 2023, most materials on the page experience focused on adhering to Core Web Vitals.
Several of Google’s resources on page experience are linked to the helpful content update:
Like this Google Search Central doc on “The role of page experience in helpful content.”
While Google stated that there were no significant updates to their page experience update, it’s interesting to know that helpful content and page experience are fundamentally connected.
Google then linked to their “Understanding page experience in Google Search results” page, which had been revised:
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Page experience in 2025
Google provided SEOs with a page experience checklist on the previously mentioned page.
Perform well for the Core Web Vitals assessment.
Serve pages via secure protocols (HTTPS, HSTS implemented).
Use responsive mobile design.
Avoid using excessive amounts of ads, particularly above the fold. (This relates to Google’s earlier page layout algorithm update.)
Avoid using intrusive overlays (e.g., for regional content choices) that take up too much space above the fold
These are all solid recommendations, let’s break them down so they are easier to understand.
Core Web Vitals: A key element of Google page experience
Since its inception in the early 2020s, responsiveness has been a key aspect of Google page experience evaluations.
Previously, Google evaluated page-speed performance against lab-based metrics and a numeric page-speed rating.