If you run a website then this news is very important for you and your business. Google has confirmed that it is now going to take into account whether or not a website is mobile-friendly when indexing for its search engine. Basically this means that websites that are not mobile-friendly will not be ranked higher than those who are. This change comes into effect starting April 2015 so site owners have over a month to make the required changes to ensure Google doesn’t penalize their website for not being mobile-friendly.
In a post on its Webmaster Central blog Google has confirmed that starting April 21st it will be expanding its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and “will have a significant impact in our search results.”
The benefit for users here is that they’ll get relevant and high quality search results for websites that are optimized for viewing on mobile devices.
It can be a pain to navigate a website that’s not optimized for mobile on a smartphone or tablet so hopefully this change by Google will compel more developers to ensure that their websites are better suited to cater to users that are coming in through mobile devices.
Filed in . Read more about Google and Google Search.