Google

Google to Rank Mobile-Friendly Websites Higher in Search Results

According to a recent Google blog post, on April 21 Google will start using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal for websites to make it easier for users to get relevant, high quality search results optimized for their mobile devices. If you don’t have a mobile website, or your website is a few years or more old, it’s probably not.

This is significant, because Google rarely pre-announces an important change like this, and puts an exact date on it.

Those who ignore their warning, do so at their peril. Many sites hit by Google’s Panda update a few years back experienced a 50% to 70% drop in their search traffic, and given how small some mobile phone screen sizes are, even ranking just a couple spots lower could cause an 80% or 90% decline in your mobile search traffic.

Why is this so important? More people are now using mobile devices than desktop computers to access the Internet.

If have Google Analytics installed on your website, you can use the Mobile Usability Report in your Google Webmaster Tools account to learn how Googlebot views your pages.

For help with the coming seismic shift in Google rankings, get with your webmaster ASAP, or contact us today. DON’T WAIT until the last minute to implement design changes to your website or make a mobile site, as it will take Google time to crawl or re-crawl it and recognize if it is mobile friendly.

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