‘No Whitelist of exceptions for Page Experience Update’ says Google

A whitelist is a database of email and IP addresses that have been designated as “safe” by search engines. According to Google’s John Mueller, the page experience upgrade has no exception list or whitelist as far as it is known. That implies, there is no list or exception of sites to which Google page experience change will not be applied to. When asked about the page experience upgrade, John replied on Twitter, “as far as I know, there’s no list of exceptions.”  

When the search engine whitelists someone, a brand, a document, or a service, it indicates that the websites should be given special treatment, rights, or access. Simply put, it is like a high-end nightclub’s VIP guest list. If your name is on the list, you will be able to skip the line and get directly to the VIP area and enjoy your night.

This came to light when someone raised a question on Twitter about some huge brand sites having low web vital ratings and having stuff like annoying interstitials that aren’t in line with the page experience update.

“Do you think ESPN, CNN, NYT or Amazon… don’t match with Core Web Vitals /Page Experience Google will demote them??”

John responds and advocates that, “Yes, as I know, there’s no exceptions. Some sites are very strong and quite relevant to certain queries, but that doesn’t mean this update doesn’t affect them the same as others. That includes sites from Google too, FWIW.”

Answering the question, John Mueller also explained that Google has already discussed whitelists and exception lists. In 2011, Google stated that there are no whitelists for algorithms in Google Search. However, some revelation later revealed that exception lists do really exist. For example Google’s Search and Image feature, ‘Safesearch’ allows Google to determine if a site marked by the adult filter is adult or not, and hence whether it should be included in a list or just blacklisted. Nevertheless, there are no exceptions or whitelists for the page experience upgrade, so there you have it.