Judgement day has been set. The Four Horsemen of Google will ride on April the 21st, 2015, and forever change the rank and order of websites on their search results pages.
Yes, it’s another Google Algorithm, but this time there’s no fluffy animal name to take the sting out of the tail. Instead, they are giving us a no-nonsense, ‘compliant’ or ‘non-compliant’ test to identify and prioritise all websites that are considered to be (by Google) mobile-friendly.
Those that pass will be rewarded; those that fail, well… in Google’s own words this change will have “a significant impact in our search results”.
Why is this happening?
Google aims, as do all other search engines, to provide their users with useful and relevant content in response to the user’s search. With more people moving to mobile devices, Google needs to be able to show sites that work whether the browser is on a desktop, laptop, tablet or phone, and so they have created this new algorithm to promote mobile friendly sites.
How does the algorithm work?
Like panda, penguin, hummingbird and all of the others, this new algorithm will run periodically, examining all sites known to Google and making an assessment against a set of criteria, including:
> the presence of a viewport meta tag
> the spacing of links and touchable content
> the size and scalability of text
> the use of unplayable or blocked content
> slow pages, and more.
It first runs on the 21st April, giving you some time to get ready for it.
Are you Mobile Friendly?
If you have an SEO package with us, then sit back and relax, as your site will be ready for the 21st April deadline.
For those that don’t, the first thing to do is to head over to Google's Test and take the mobile friendly test. From there, you can either use the tools and guidance on offer from Google, or if all of this seems like a headache, please get in touch.