Google Update – Is Your Website Mobile Friendly
- 20th January 2015
- Mobile website design, Web design
Have you ever tapped on a Google Search result on your mobile phone, only to find yourself looking at a page where the text was too small, the links were tiny, and you had to scroll sideways to see all the content? This usually happens when the website has not been optimized to be viewed on a mobile phone.
This can be a frustrating experience for mobile searchers. Starting today, to make it easier for people to find the information that they’re looking for, Google are adding a “mobile-friendly” label to their mobile search results.
Below is an example of how this will look:
This change is currently rolling out globally. A page is eligible for the “mobile-friendly” label if it meets the following criteria as detected by Googlebot:
- Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash.
- Uses text that is readable without zooming.
- Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom.
- Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped.
If you want to make sure that your page meets the mobile-friendly criteria:
Check your pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test
Read their updated documentation their Webmasters Mobile Guide on how to create and improve your mobile site.
See the Mobile usability report in Google Webmaster Tools, which highlights major mobile usability issues across your entire site, not just one page.
Check Googles how-to guide for third-party software like WordPress or Joomla, in order to migrate your website hosted on a CMS (Content Management System) to use a mobile-friendly template
Google see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience. They are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.
If you have any questions or want help to make your website ‘mobile-friendly’, contact us on 01225 792911 or use our Contact Page
The original post from Ryoichi Imaizumi and Doantam Phan, from Google Mobile Search can be found here
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