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Google says: "Mobile Friendly or else!"

Posted in Mobile, Web design

Many of you may have heard that Google has recently launched a fairly significant change to the algorithm that serves up search results on mobile phones. Indeed, I have received some phone calls and emails looking for clarification on this so I felt it appropriate to write this post.

So, fundamentally Google is trying to improve the user experience for people who are searching for information on their personal mobile devices. Many of you may have needed to search for something while on your mobile phone, found what looks like a valid link in a list of Google results, only to click on it and find that it is near impossible to view or use the website on your device.

It is this type of site that Google is looking to penalise, or rather, it is those sites who have been optimised for mobile use that will be rewarded in this scenario.

So, to be clear on this, your site's Google ranking may be adversely affected under the following scenario:

If a user conducts a search while on their mobile device in Google AND your website is not optimised for mobile device viewing.

If a user is searching via Google on their tablet or desktop computer, your non-mobile friendly website will not be affected.

In terms of how much impact this will have on your rankings, Google are not clear on this, except to say that under the above scenario their will be a "...significant impact in our search results". The other thing to note is that typically Google rolls out changes like this incrementally (not to every user at once) and you may not see any changes for quite some time.

Ok, so how do I know if my site is Mobile Friendly?

Well, if your site has been built using Responsive design techniques or if it has a dedicated mobile version, you are well ahead of the curve. Read more about mobile website optimisation.

To check how your site stacks up and to see if it will take a rankings hit when people are using Google on their phones, visit this site and enter your website address.

If you find your site is not mobile friendly we can help with the transition.

We have a couple of options for those in this situation and would be happy to chat about them further with you and provide a quote.

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