Google to boost mobile-friendly websites

| SEO

Google to boost mobile-friendly websites

Google has announced that they are planning to update their mobile-friendliness algorithm which will give mobile-friendly websites a boost in the search engine results.

Last year, Google rolled out an algorithm update that was deemed “Mobilegeddon”. This update implemented ranking signals that would favour mobile-friendly websites over non mobile-friendly websites.

This algorithm update won’t be another Mobilegeddon but it will increase the effects of the mobile-friendliness algorithm and it is likely to give mobile-friendly websites a significant boost.

Google have stated this new algorithm update will be rolled out at the “beginning of May” and that it will increase the effect of the mobile-friendly ranking signals. Google also said “If you've already made your site mobile-friendly, you will not be [negatively] impacted by this update” which is another incentive to switch over to a mobile-friendly website if you haven’t already. 

The update will be rolled out gradually although it is unclear if the rollout will take weeks or months so don’t expect to see any major changes to the search engine results page or a disappearance of non mobile-friendly sites immediately.

Google have been working on delivering mobile users a better search experience for a few years now, first by simply marking mobile-friendly websites with a badge back in 2014 to make their users aware of more user-friendly websites but in April 2015 it was the first time they included a mobile-friendly ranking signal within their algorithm.

At this time we don’t know how strong this algorithm change will be but we do know that it will increase the importance of mobile-friendly websites and will rank non mobile-friendly websites even lower than before.

If you aren’t sure if your website is mobile-friendly, you can check with this Google mobile-friendly tool.  

Luke Stanley