Google cracks down on non-mobile friendly websites
In the past few months, we’ve held webinar sessions and written blogs on the importance of Responsive Website Design (RWD) and it seems we’re not the only one talking about the importance of a better mobile experience for your tablet and smartphone using guests.
It’s becoming increasingly important, especially to the search giant Google, to provide a good search experience for its mobile device users. In fact, Google has begun sending warnings to webmasters showing their site’s shortcomings in mobile results. The warnings say that pages that aren’t mobile-friendly will be ranked on that factor and could show up lower in the search results for smartphone users.
Some conclude that this warning could signal a new mobile algorithm update but even if it doesn’t, it still shows that Google is focused on the user experience and it’s up to the webmaster to provide the best experience possible.
It’s important to have a good experience on your desktop site as well but when running the numbers, we see that U.S. adults are spending much more time on mobile than on their laptops or desktop computers. In fact, adults will spend 2 hours 51 minutes a day on a mobile device. Marketers are closely watching this trend and devoting more marketing dollars toward mobile search, in PPC and SEO, compared to years previous.
Google is making it abundantly clear that it wants to deliver quality links to its mobile users meaning mobile optimized sites are now a necessity and not something to put your brand ahead of the curve. If your site isn’t mobile optimized, it could be so behind the curve no one can see you. Google's enhanced its search results for mobile devices to include a mobile-friendly label that tells the user whether or not the site will work well on a mobile device.
Need to test your site to see if it’s mobile-friendly? Google has a tool for that: Mobile-friendly test. You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to run a variety of other reports to assess the overall health and status of your website and keywords. Or, if you’re looking for a quick refresher on Google search, check out our Google Algorithm Cheat Sheet & Infographic!
