All month long the web world has been watching as Google was testing the mobile friendly icons in mobile search results. This ties into the fact that mobile searches have grown by 400% since 2010. Google is the only company that would be in a position to push the internet into this new mobile frontier.
To improve the search experience for smartphone users and address their pain points, we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.
– Yoshikiyo Kato, Software Engineer, on behalf of Google Mobile Search team
Back on Oct 13th, Google introduced Mobile friendly icons next to URL’s in mobile searches. This means at some point in the near future bad mobile sites will see a demotion in search. Some of you may notice Google is testing text based notifacations. Gray text stating if a website is mobile friendly. No one really knows for certain how this will affect the visitors link choice. Would a visitor click a link from a mobile device if the text next to it said non mobile friendly? That’s going to be the million dollar question.
It’s time to re-consider that mobile version of your website. We like to develop responsive websites, but just having a mobile version of your important information is better than a static non-mobile website. Don’t think of this as an attack on the website you are so proud of. Think of this as a time to plan how you will best deliver your mesage to a mobile audience.
