Google Demands Mobile-Friendly Websites for Mobile Search – Will your site pass?
Google announced its mobile search algorithm will change to prioritize mobile-friendly
sites over non-mobile friendly sites, effective April 21, 2015. The announcement was
February 26, 2015 on their Webmaster Central Blog. Read the details here:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendlysearch.html
Now what does this mean? And how does it affect your adventure site?
Let’s start with what it means.
More mobile-friendly websites will show up in Google search results. Last we checked,
Google controls 67% of all US search traffic (and 58% of global), compared to 19% for
Bing and 10% for Yahoo.
How does this affect your Adventure site?
If your site is not already mobile-friendly, it will drop in the mobile search results.
Your site may even disappear from mobile search results completely over time,
depending on how many alternative mobile-friendly results are available for Google to
show. Let’s do some math next. What percentage of your total traffic finds you via
mobile devices? For our adventure company clients, it varies from 35% to 60% in any
given month, and will only increase going forward! Let’s see - 30,000 visitors a month,
and 50% can’t find you – that’s 15,000 visitors lost, - you get the point.
Or did you?
Just to be sure you got the information, Google took it a step further and sent out email
messages to the webmasters on google webmaster tools accounts, specifically calling
out mobile usability issues that need to be fixed, prior to April 21st.
If you do not see the Google-generated tag “mobile-friendly” under your company
name in the search results, then Google is directly telling you that your site is at risk of
losing ranking in mobile search results.
How does Google define “mobile-friendly”?
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
Just because your website is already responsive doesn’t guarantee that Google
thinks so too. Find out what Google actually sees on your site now with the Fetch &
Render test (described below).
Does this affect desktop search results? Not yet – the changes are only for mobile
search results. Don’t get too comfortable though, we see our clients’ mobile search
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traffic doubling annually in the adventure industry. What’s yours doing?
This is a like an open-book test from Google. The good news for you is that
Google’s email message tells you exactly what Google thinks is wrong, item by item,
and how to fix it. The bad news is, fixing it can be technically challenging. The good
news is – it is fixable! If you don’t have the skillset in-house or a team already
outsourced to fix your site, find an expert fast. We invest in an SEO mastermind group
run by Search Engine News, and have direct access to the top SEO experts in the
country on a daily basis – that’s how important this stuff is.
Use These 3 Tests & 1 Tool:
Use these tests to determine if your site is headed for a Google mobile smackdown,
and how to prevent it.
Step 1: Take the Mobile-Friendly Test
Find out if your site passes or not. Here’s the link.
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
You don't have to be logged into webmaster tools. This is the only test that will tell you
if your site is eligible for the mobile-friendly label generated automatically by Google
Search.
Green is go; Red is stop.
Step 2: Take the Mobile Usability Test
Log into your Google Webmaster Tools with your google account, select your
company’s site, then click on Search Appearance > Mobile Usability. Enter your URL
(be sure its canonically correct, www or non-www).
If your mobile usability report comes back with errors, you will exactly what type of
error Google sees, and can drill down to every page with that error. No guessing
needed.
Step 3: Fetch & Render Test
In Webmaster Tools, next click on Crawl > Fetch & Render as Google. If you don’t see
your home page, or only part of your home page, you have a robots.txt blocking
problem. Delete the offending code (Google will tell you exactly what line it is) and rerun the Fetch and render test. Select Desktop and Mobile Smartphone version so you
can see both results.
Julie Thorner, Liquid Spark
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