Will your business be ready for the Google update on April 21st?
On April 21st Google will change their search algorithms to reflect the change in browsing habits and the shift from using computers and laptops to mobile devices to browse the web.
Google has always favoured sites with good usability in its rankings, but starting from the 21st the importance of mobile-usability will be markedly increased as Google expand their use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.
An online statement from Google revealed that “this change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.”
Journalists may be referring to it as ‘Mobilegeddon’ but here at Dial a Geek we’re not so worried. Unlike the Panda and Penguin releases in 2011 and 2012, websites that fail to perform in time will not be placed on the naughty step waiting for Google to re-run the filter.
This time, as soon as you make the necessary changes to improve your site’s mobile-friendliness you will see your site ranking pick up.
Factors that influence a mobile-usability score will be font size, links being too close together and content wider than the screen.
To help you identify these issues and keep your site easily-discoverable for mobile users, Google have released the following tools:
- Google’s Guide To Building A Mobile Friendly Site will tell you everything you need to know about setting up a mobile-friendly site.
- Google’s Mobile Friendly Test allows you to check whether your website is mobile friendly by testing a few pages.
- Google’s Mobile Usability Report provides a full list of mobile usability issues your site may have.
“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.” – Takaki Makino, Chaesang Jung, and Doantam Phan
ALL ARTICLES