Is your website ‘Mobile-Friendly’? If your website is still in the dark ages and isn’t set up to be responsive, then a change Google announced a few months ago could really hurt you.
Pretty soon, Google will be adding a new ‘Mobile-Friendly’ label to listings, and if you don’t have that moniker, it could hurt your search ranking. (Note this is for searches done on mobile devices, not desktop searches).
Fortunately, it’s easy to make sure your site passes the grade. Google has come out with a “mobile-friendly” test page where you can see if your site will qualify.
There are a number of other places to check out your website as well. A good place to start (always) is W3.org. Along with their other validators, they have one for mobile. But beware – it’s extremely sensitive to any possible issue.
Another option – if you are using Google Chrome as your browser – is the “mobile device emulation” feature in Chrome Developer Tools. These tools are found under the Chrome menu View > Developer > Developer Tools. Once you click on Developer Tools and see the toolbar at the bottom of your screen, click on the little mobile device icon on the left of the screen.
This will open up a very cool tool that most people are probably not even aware exists inside their browser. Not only can you select from an amazing array of devices (and choose portrait or landscape for each of them), you can also select the bandwidth speed to see how well your pages would load. It even turns your mouse cursor into a touch simulator, allowing you to drag the screen as if you were on a mobile device.
With all these tools at your disposal, there’s no reason to not make certain your website is mobile-friendly, and ready for the new labels when Google finally launches them.
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Comments 2
What do you mean soon? They have been doing this already for months… In fact stage 1 has been rolled out for 4-6 months now, and within the next month or two stage 2 is being rolled out which I think is what you are confused with.
Stage 2 is an algorithm update giving more authority to results that are mobile friendly, than results that are not. This affects mobile more than desktop but you can bet that this signal will still affect desktop search too, but with less impact.
Hi Dean,
This post was from February of last year – maybe you thought it was from this year? :) Still, thanks for drawing attention to this again. I’m amazed at how many people still don’t have a mobile-friendly site!