Mobile web use has grown at a rapid rate and as part of Google's drive to display the most useful and relevant results to their users according to the device they are using.
Last year's announcement resulted in the little 'mobile friendly' tags that you might have spotted appearing in mobile search results. This summer, Google announced that they would be expanding how much this is used. This suggests that 'unfriendly' sites will probably start to slip down the list on mobile.
Who does this affect?
It only really affects you if the following two things are true:
- you have a high level of mobile traffic
- you do not have a responsive (or a mobile version) of your website
What should you do?
If you have a responsive site then you really don't need to do anything. If you don't have a mobile or responsive site then you might want to think about getting that sorted. If you're not sure then check out this web page testing tool from Google to find out what state your site's in.
If your web traffic is largely on mobile and tablet then we really would urge you to put this top of your website development roadplan. We don't know how quickly this will be rolled out or what affect it will have; it's probably not worth waiting to find out.
If your traffic is largely desktop based still then this is a less urgent development. It is worth looking at your web analytics to see how quickly your mobile usage is growing so that you can at least try to make sure you do any development work before it's an urgent problem for you.
Further Reading
- Mobilegeddon: the fifth horse of the apocalypse? Tincan Journal 2015
- Finding more mobile-friendly web results, Google Webmaster Central Blog, Feb 2015
- Continuing to make the web more mobile friendly, Google Webmaster Central Blog, March 2016
- A new mobile friendly testing tool, Google Webmaster Central Blog, May 2016
