Mobile-friendly sites will be ranked higher in Google Search Results Beginning April 2015.
The Google Webmasters have let everyone know that beginning next month, sites that are not easy to read on mobile devices are not going to rank as high as comparable sites that are easy to read with a mobile device or smartphone.In other words, you are going to be penalized starting April 21, 2015 if your website or blog is not compatible with mobile devices and friendly to searches on small phone screens.
The deadline to be mobile-friendly is April 21, 2015.
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Check Your Site for Compatibility with Mobile Devices
There is an online site that allows you to input your site’s url and determine if you need to worry about this or not.
- Go to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and enter a few pages to confirm the compatibility of your site or blog.
- Go to your Google Webmaster Account and check your entire site by grabbing a Mobile Usability Report.
What if You Fail the Google Mobile-Friendly Test?
.If your site or blog fails the test, don’t panic. The test itself (or your Google Webmaster Report) will explain the steps you need to take in order to have your blog or web site ready to meet Google’s Mobile Friendly requirements by the deadline of April 21st.
You may need to get busy, though. April 21, 2015 isn't that far away ....
Why Is Google Doing This?
Google is pushing mobile compatibility because so many of its clientele are searching Google using mobile devices. Google wants to provide the best information to those folk who are using Google and that means pushing those providing content on the web (like you and me and your competitors) to make sure that their stuff is friendly for mobile devices.
It’s all about delivering the best service to the person choosing Google for a search in lieu of Bing or Yahoo or Ask etc. on their smartphone.
From the Google Webmaster Central Blog:
When it comes to search on mobile devices, users should get the most relevant and timely results, no matter if the information lives on mobile-friendly web pages or apps. As more people use mobile devices to access the internet, our algorithms have to adapt to these usage patterns. In the past, we’ve made updates to ensure a site is configured properly and viewable on modern devices. We’ve made it easier for users to find mobile-friendly web pages and we’ve introduced App Indexing to surface useful content from apps. ….
Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.
For more information, check out:
- Google’s Guide to Mobile Friendly Sites
- "Mobilegeddon" Is Coming on April 21 - Are You Ready? by Chuck Price at SearchEngineWatch (gives some pros and cons to having a mobile-friendly site as well as discussion of having a separate site for phone searches)
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