The ins and outs of Google’s mobile-friendliness update

Back in April, Google announced that they were going to make a major algorithm change focusing on mobile-friendliness.

Why mobile?

With over 60% of Google searches being generated by mobile search users. Google needed to deliver their users more mobile-friendly websites. However many websites still aren’t mobile-friendly.

With the majority of searches being made by mobile devices, it is only logical for Google to try and deliver those users with the best, most user-friendly results which in this case is mobile-friendly websites.  

What we know about the algorithm change:

1) The change was put in place to ensure that mobile search users would now get better and higher quality search results, as mobile-friendly websites will appear higher in the SERPs.

2) Google stated that they will either rank a site as being mobile-friendly or not mobile-friendly. There is no in-between. This means if your website isn’t fully mobile-friendly your rankings in the mobile search results could take a hit.

3) The impact is supposedly bigger than both Panda and Penguin.

4) If your website is mobile-friendly you will be rewarded with a “Mobile-friendly” label next to your website on the search engine results page. This label will give users more of an incentive to click on you.

What makes a website mobile-friendly?

These are Googles guidelines for having a mobile-friendly website:

1) All text needs to be readable and visible without zooming or scrolling left to right.

2) Links need to be far enough apart so they are clickable without zooming.

3) Websites shouldn’t use software or apps like Flash.

If you aren’t sure if your website is mobile-friendly then you can test it on Google’s mobile-friendliness test.

The solution

Responsive websites are favoured by Google as well as your website visitors as they can adjust to fit any screen and deliver the best user-experience.

Google favours them for a number of reasons including they are easier to crawl as it is only one website, unlike a mobile website that is completely separate from your standard website. This makes it easier to crawl and saves their resources, making indexing faster and more efficient.

Users favour responsive websites because the user experience is seamless, not limited and provides full accessible no matter what device they are using.

With over half your users visiting your website from a mobile device, being mobile-friendly is now a necessity for any business. Don’t hold off going mobile any longer.