Over time Google performs different experiments to make sure webmasters focus on providing quality user experience to the users of their website. But later on, Google realizes that webmasters have to struggle a lot to maintain certain factors, and in order to maintain those factors they have to compromise with the primary factors for the success of SEO.
The same is the case with Mobile Friendly, Page Speed, Secure Sites, and Page Experience as ranking factors.
Recently, Google updated its documented ranking systems page in order to update/remove four ranking systems from its list. These ranking factors were Mobile Friendly, Page Speed, Secure Sites, and Page Experience. Google added these ranking factors to the retired factors list.
Let us understand the reasons to take this step
Which Ranking Factors are Removed from the Ranking Factors List?
- Page Experience System
- Mobile Friendly Ranking System
- Page Speed System
- Secure Site System
Why Google Retired These Ranking Factors?
According to Google, it already had a page experience ranking signal in the form of HTTPS. They introduced Page Experience Update in order to make webmasters focus on certain other page experience aspects. So, Core Web Vitals and HTTPS were not part of a separate ranking system. Google had to combine all these signals into one Page Experience Signal but, it did not.
Even according to John Mueller, webmasters were hyper-focused on core web vitals, mobile friendliness, and page speed, which is a waste of time and energy.
Our Take
Let Google retire all these ranking signals but when you and your competitor are fighting neck to neck for rank 1 then these factors can be the tiebreaker. Anyway, nowadays majority of the audience is coming from mobile devices, so one must focus on mobile-friendliness and secure systems.
So, HTTPS, page speed, and mobile friendliness are still going to be relevant