Your website, mobile friendliness and Google

The number of people surfing the web on smartphones and tablets continues to see growth, with more and more people eschewing desktops and laptops for the convenience of the internet in their pocket.  From the sites that we manage we’re regularly seeing mobile (smartphone & tablet) usage figures in the 20% - 30% range and in some cases rising to over 50%

For a while now, Google have been advocating mobile friendliness and the benefits of responsive design. At the end of April they took this one step further by beginning a global rollout of a new version of their search algorithm. 

This update affects searches that are done on mobile devices and places greater weight on websites being mobile-friendly as a ranking signal.  Google have stated that “If your site’s pages aren’t mobile-friendly, there may be a significant decrease in mobile traffic from Google Search”

Microsoft have followed Google’s lead with an announcement on May 14th stating that it too would be using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal and would be highlighting mobile-friendly sites in its search results.

What does this mean for your website.

Essentially, if your site isn’t responsive and doesn’t offer mobile users an optimal experience, Google and Bing will penalize your ranking in their search results for searches conducted on mobile devices.

Interested in converting your site to be responsive?

Get in touch,  we’d be happy to discuss with you what is required to make your site mobile-friendly.