On April 21, 2015, Google began using a website’s “mobile friendliness” as a ranking factor. That means that if your site isn’t mobile friendly, then it could be penalized in mobile search results. That could have an effect on traffic to your website. Here’s a link to test to see if your site is already mobile-friendly, https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/.

Google’s mobile search algorithm update targets non-mobile friendly sites and rolled out through April of 2015. This is a big one, and could affect a large portion of your web traffic and SEO results.

In the last few years, mobile traffic has increased dramatically. It’s speculated that more than 50% of Google searches are performed on mobile.

Even Google is saying this update is going to have a bigger effect on search rankings than Panda or Penguin, the biggest updates Google has ever launched, as quoted by a member of Google’s Webmaster Trends team, Zineb Ait Bahajji at SMX Munich.

The problem is many sites are not responsive, meaning that they were only built for desktop computers and are hard to navigate on mobile devices.

Google doesn’t want to serve up results that are not mobile user friendly, so they are implementing a new algorithm change to demote sites that aren’t usable on phones and tablets. Google has said there is no degree of “mobileness”; it’s either yes or no.

If your website isn’t responsive, call ScreenTrend now! 515-243-0892 or email us at info@screentrend.com. If your website is responsive and mobile friendly, relax and pour yourself a cup of coffee and grin.

Additional Reading

The strategy behind Google’s mobile algorithm update and how “This update is really about Google’s vision of what the web should be—using its search results as a lever to move everyone in the direction it wants them to go.”