Alert Santa Cruz Businesses! Google is Updating Mobile Search…
And It’s Not Too Friendly.
If your site is not considered “mobile-friendly” by Google by April 21, expect to see a serious drop-off in rankings for your website on mobile searches.
That’s a big deal as a recent study said that over 50% of all internet searches are now done on a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet.
Expert Barry Swartz of Search Engine Land says, “Since we know this algorithm will be significantly larger in impact compared to the Panda and Penguin algorithms, webmasters are kind of anxious about the release.”
If webmasters are concerned about the upcoming algorithm change, then you should be as well. A significant drop in your web traffic from mobile sources could have damaging effects on your bottomline if you garner leads and customers from your website.
Why Is Google Doing This?
Google is always trying to improve the end user experience. If their robots determine that your website does not display properly then they believe that users will have the same issue.
Ever look at a website on your phone that you have to zoom in on in order to read the text? Even worse, if there is a link in the text to another page, it’s nearly impossible to click on it.
Google is more concerned about the end-user experience and less about your individual mobile site appearing in search results. It’s important to note though, this will not affect searches on laptops and desktops.
Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?
It’s pretty simple. If your site page is not considered mobile-friendly it will be excluded from mobile search results. There is no grey area here.
Fortunately, Google is judging each website on a page by page basis, in real-time. So if some pages that are not currently mobile-friendly are updated to be so, you won’t have to wait months and months, you’ll just need to wait until the next time Google crawls your site. If your site page is approved, the change in Google results will be seen.
Not sure if your site is mobile-friendly? First you can search on your phone and see if your listing has the “Mobile-friendly” in grey like the example below.
You can also check on Google’s tool here https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ for a page by page analysis.
But my Site Looks Mobile-Friendly on My Smart Device
This is not uncommon right now. Google says your website is not mobile-friendly, but it looks great on your iphone or tablet. The problem may lie in the Googlebots being blocked to certain JavaScript, CSS and image files. Also if there is any media that uses Flash, this will be an issue as those do not play on mobile devices. There may be a variety of issues that are causing your site to not be recognized as mobile-friendly. In order to remedy this, talk to your webmaster or web designer. Don’t have one? Contact us and we can get it sorted it out for you.
