Google now labelling sites that are ‘mobile friendly’

Have you ever done a quick google search on your mobile phone and tapped a result to find the text is tiny and you have to scroll sideways or zoom in to see everything?

The popularity of using mobile devices like smart phones and tablets has been rising quickly for the past few years. For most businesses, not having a mobile website means a frustrating experience for your mobile users and potential customers as they’ll have to zoom in to read things or even worse the layout might be broken.

Most website companies will include mobile optimisation with the build of your new website as its easier than it’s ever been to make sure a website looks good on mobile – however it may be worth checking yours as Google are making changes (again).

Google is trying to aid and reduce that frustration by labelling websites in its search results that are ‘mobile friendly’. They are using several things to determine if a website is mobile compatible, including if it:

• 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

So far this change simply means your website will either have, or not have, the ‘mobile friendly’ label when a mobile search is performed, however google have said on their website that they are “experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.” Which means it could affect the rank/position of your website on Google in the future (but not yet).

You can check your website on their mobile testing tool by clicking here and if you need any help getting your website mobile compatible please feel free to give us a call!