Starting on November 18, 2014 Google started to add a “mobile-friendly” label to mobile search results which they expect to roll out globally over the next few weeks. What makes a site ‘mobile friendly’? According to Google, a page can qualify for the “mobile-friendly” label if it meets the following criteria:
- Stays clear of software not often used on mobile devices, like Flash
- Uses readable text without zooming
- Content fits on the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
- Displays links far enough apart so users can easily tap the correct link
For web designers fluent in responsive designs and have been using responsive designs when developing websites, this comes as good news. But for those webmasters who are unfamiliar with responsive design, there’s a lot of sweaty foreheads that could use a hanky right about now.
Do you know if your page meets the mobile-friendly criteria? Google has a tool to check your own pages to see how they stack up against Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test criteria.
If your site doesn’t pass the test, the tool will point out exactly why you didn’t pass and give you some steps to follow to correct the issues. Currently this tool is only available in English, but will be rolled out worldwide over the next few weeks.
And if you website does pass Google’s ‘mobile friendly’ standards, you can expect to see a label next to your site similar to one shown in the example below:
Toward the bottom of Google’s announcement was another gold nugget piece of information. They wrote, ‘We see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience. We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.’
With this in mind, there’s no better time than now to keep a close watch on your current rankings. Investigate your website to see if it’s mobile friendly and then investigate your competitors too. Watch closely over the next couple of months to see where you are in the search engine rankings. Did you go up? Did you go down? Or did you stay the same?
It should also be interesting to see how this will affect click-through rate. It seems reasonable to assume that once people start noticing the label, they’re much more likely to visit a page labeled “mobile-friendly” before visiting a page that doesn’t have the label.
Some people have commented that when searching on their mobile devices, they have seen an icon of a picture of a phone with a slash through to identify sites that are “not mobile-friendly.” Here’s a screen capture with a picture of the icon. It appears right before the name of the website.
Google began testing mobile-friendly icons earlier this month, and then started to test these “not mobile-friendly” signs. Some people are predicting that they’re running an A/B test to see which version is better for its user interface. Which do you prefer?