Google recently announced that it will soon make big changes to its algorithm that elevates “mobile-friendliness” as a requirement for sites to perform well in its search rankings.
As part of the announcement, starting April 21st, 2015, Google will not only start labeling sites as “mobile-friendly”, but if your site does not the Google standards for this measurement, then you will see a drop in your mobile search engine result rankings. According to Search Engine Watch</a>, 46% of users use mobile exclusively as a primary research tool, so ensuring that your site meets Google’s standards is increasingly important.
Google has provided a simple and fast way to check your site’s mobile-friendliness via the Mobile Friendly Test tool. Simply type your website’s URL into the search bar, give it a few seconds to process, and your results will appear.
If you use the tool and your results show the site is not mobile-friendly, Google tells you exactly what needs to be done to your site to make it mobile-friendly. The Mobile-Friendly Test also provides a preview of any major errors the Googlebot encounters when crawling your website, so this one is probably worth performing just to see how your site measures up.
If your site is not mobile friendly by April 15th, your rankings will fall. Fortunately, there are several options to remedy this problem including making your site responsive or creating a separate mobile site. If you decide to make a separate mobile site vs. a responsive design site, it’s wise to consider running the report to see where you stand in the eyes of Google.
Here are 9 Things You Need to Know About Google’s Mobile-Friendly Update
What do you think about Google’s changes to their search ranking algorithm?