
Evaluating page experience for a better web - twapi
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience.html
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pachico
"Through both internal studies and industry research, users show they prefer
sites with a great page experience." You don't say!!! Good they made internal
and industry researches about this since I really thought users preferred poor
experience...

~~~
swiley
Based on the update to google groups a few years ago it seems like these
findings are at least a surprise to them.

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pachico
So true! Also based on the design of Blogger!

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jeffbee
I’d like some personal ranking features, or a browser extension that changes
the SERP. If a page is capable of asking me to enable notifications, I want it
deleted from the results. If a page has a giant popover when it loses focus, I
want it demoted. Negative signals for infinite clickbait at the bottoms of
articles. Let’s be opinionated about the “better web”.

~~~
sp332
You know you can turn off notifications in your browser if you don't want them
right?

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yepthatsreality
I think the larger point is that the user wants their customized results
actually customizable using their metrics not Google's predefined metrics of a
"better web".

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gundmc
Seems like exactly what many on HN were asking for: weigh page speed without
biasing towards AMP.

This can only be a good thing.

~~~
pedrogpimenta
They are favouring pages that weigh less. But they don't say they are putting
pages that weigh less above pages that use AMP (if they weigh more). I'm
guessing it's another point on their metrics. If it weighs < X MB it's one
point, if they use AMP it's another point, so those would still appear first.

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nathanyz
These new metrics have a serious flaw. The iframe loophole is so bad, we even
did a write-up on it: [https://buzz.swarmify.com/how-to-get-a-100-score-on-
lighthou...](https://buzz.swarmify.com/how-to-get-a-100-score-on-lighthouse-
pagespeed-in-one-easy-step/). See the article for the gory details, but the
gist of it is, you can wrap the entire site in an iframe and always get a
perfect score

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addy_osmani
I lead engineering for some of Google's developer tooling like Lighthouse. You
are correct that we currently have a gap in our ability to measure subframes
in the lab locally on your machine (doing so cross-origin reliably is
complex), but we're looking at how we can improve this. The important bit I
want to call out here is that "framehole" is a measurement gap in LH: you can
currently game the score but you're only fooling yourself in the process —
there is no benefit to the user experience.

Speaking of real world user experience, accounting for iframes has a number of
complicated privacy and security challenges at the resolution of an individual
page load. However, the good news is that the Chrome User Experience Report*
aggregates anonymized data from many opted-in users and, as a result, is able
to account for iframes in its measurement. Which is to say, the field data we
surface in our tools (powered by CrUX) does not have this problem. We’re
working to get our lab tools to align with this behavior as well.

* [https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-user-experien...](https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-user-experience-report)

~~~
nathanyz
I appreciate the reasoned and thought out reply. At the engineering level, I
get why capturing the results from the iframe is challenging and that its just
a gap in the measurement by the tools.

Here is the problem though. When these new measurements roll out to Pagespeed
Insights, that score will be treated like the holy bible of performance. Most
who use and make decisions off of that score will not read nor understand the
engineering level nuance that it doesn't take into account Iframe content.

That means that all over the world, people will be optimizing for the score
even if the score is incorrect. Decisions will be made on whether the score
goes up or down when using various tools, including our service. As it stands,
the score ignores iframed content. So it will ALWAYS be the case that using a
3rd party embed of some content will lead to a better score than natively
including the content on the page. Anything embedded from a third party simply
disappears in the scoring.

While I don't believe that this choice is being made on purpose to favor
Google properties, at the end of the day that is exactly what happens. YouTube
embeds improve page speed, slow loading advert iframes, don't impact the
score.

So we are trying to shine some light on exactly how important this now is, and
how at the extreme excluding iframes can be used to show a score of 100 even
when nothing else has been done to improve the actual speed. If there are
engineering challenges that prevent counting iframes as of yet, then I would
submit that the score is not ready for primetime until that can be worked
through. It may not have seemed like a big enough issue, but hopefully I can
convince you that it is.

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codazoda
I _think_ I welcome these changes, but I'm worried about some of the wording
that Google uses.

 _The page experience signal measures aspects of how users perceive the
experience of interacting with a web page. Optimizing for these factors makes
the web more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces, and
helps sites evolve towards user expectations on mobile. We believe this will
contribute to business success on the web as users grow more engaged and can
transact with less friction._

I guess I have a problem with the fact that Google sees the web as primarily a
business platform where users simply transact. I do use the web this way, but
I don't _mostly_ use the web this way.

~~~
meristem
This requires trust that 1. Google understands how users perceive the
experience and then 2. can operationalize something that may be rather
personal into repeatedly measurable elements.

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seanwilson
> While all of the components of page experience are important, we will
> prioritize pages with the best information overall, even if some aspects of
> page experience are subpar. A good page experience doesn’t override having
> great, relevant content. However, in cases where there are multiple pages
> that have similar content, page experience becomes much more important for
> visibility in Search.

> ...

> When we roll out the page experience ranking update, we will also update the
> eligibility criteria for the Top Stories experience. AMP will no longer be
> necessary for stories to be featured in Top Stories on mobile; it will be
> open to any page.

All sounds pretty sensible.

For anyone working on this: Why wasn't the above done sooner? Was it
challenging to come up with a fair page performance metric for instance? Was a
very slow loading page not penalised before?

For people that weren't happy with AMP: is this moving in the right direction?

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tbodt
Headline:

> When we roll out the page experience ranking update... AMP will no longer be
> necessary for stories to be featured in Top Stories on mobile; it will be
> open to any page.

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bouke
> By contrast, here are some examples of techniques that, used responsibly,
> would not be affected by the new signal:

> Interstitials that appear to be in response to a legal obligation, such as
> for cookie usage or for age verification.

Too bad they don’t penalize cookie consent popups. Google is in a unique
position to motivate website owners to stop using tracking cookies and make
the web a better place. As a reminder, under GDPR a consent is only needed for
tracking cookies, not for functional cookies. I guess whitelisting such popups
is better aligned with their ad business.

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ForHackernews
> ...remove the AMP requirement from Top Stories eligibility. Google continues
> to support AMP, and will continue to link to AMP pages when available.

Is this Google backing down on the AMP nonsense?

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eitland
Something might be changing inside Google.

\- Last year after 10 years of utterly irrelevant and insulting ads they've
now started to show me relevant ads. I might even have clicked one or two as
it was kind of interesting.

\- Twice in the last six weeks when I hit !g in ddg to see if I was luckier in
Google, Google delighted me by actually showing exactly the results I wanted.

For those who are too young to remember old Google I'll try to explain:
normally when I search with Google the last ten years if the topic wasn't
completely mainstream, Google would twist my words to mean something that they
could show more results for.

Old Google showed what you searched for in an almost intelligent way, and this
is what I have seen again no, for the first time in ~10 years, and not only
once buy twice!

\- And now this: they'll stop trying to shove AMP down our throats..?

Let me guess:

\- someone is threatening to sue Google

\- and Googlers are tired of getting rightfully roasted for something stupid
Goolge does, every single time they show up here

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bouke
DDG has reduced my need for Google Search for about 99% now. I even dread
having to adding “!g” to my search as I have a growing dislike for Google’s
grey UX patterns.

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eitland
> I even dread having to adding “!g” to my search as I have a growing dislike
> for Google’s grey UX patterns.

Same here, and often the difference has been down to randomness, but lately -
as I mentioned - I have had not just one but two times that Google actually
behaved like Google from < 2009.

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darepublic
not enough rounded borders and box shadow on card like ui and subtle parallax
effects. D- you aren't even trying.

~~~
hinkley
It just doesn't pop.

Can you make it pop?

