On April 21 you may find it harder to rank in Google’s mobile search results if you don’t have a responsive or mobile friendly website. This is because from April 21 Google is making major updates that will affect those website rankings which are not mobile friendly or responsive.
What is Changing?
Usually the mobile rankings for a website were tied to the ranking strength of the desktop site prior to this. You usually ranked well on the mobile SERP as well if you ranked well on the desktop SERP. Google has briefly provided the information, though, that the mobile responsiveness of your website could impact your organic rankings. Definitively this is Google following through with that promise.
On April 21, we can presume that mobile friendly websites will see a remarkable boost up in rankings, especially in spaces where their competition has not taken the time to get their “mobile houses” in order and do not enjoy the mobile-friendly distinction.
Note that the mobile-friendly update only affects mobile search results i.e., searches from tablets and smart phones not searches conducted on a laptop or desktop computer.
This change will have a significant impact in Google’s search results and will affect mobile searches in all languages globally. As a result, users will find it easier to get relevant and high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.
How to Check If Your Website is Mobile Search Friendly?
Check out Google’s guide to mobile-friendly sites to get help with making a mobile-friendly site. By using the following tools you can get ready for this change to see how Googlebot views your pages if you are a webmaster:
- You can use the Mobile-Friendly Test if you want to test a few pages.
- To get a full list of mobile usability issues across your site, by using the Mobile Usability Report you can use your Webmaster Tools account if you have a site.
In an attempt to help manipulate mobile users toward a better mobile experience, Google has already been annotating mobile-friendly pages for searchers.
On April 21, the annotation will become part of the ranking algorithm, influencing the order of search results straightforwardly. In Google’s language, the change will have a major impact on search results for mobile searchers.
In addition, Google also said it will begin taking advantage of its efforts with deep-linking technology to begin to surface information from mobile apps higher in its search results. That means developers who implement these links in their apps allow Google to index their apps in a similar way as it does websites today.
