Mobilegeddon? Not yet, but your Site Should Be Mobile-Friendly

While it’s not the end of the world yet (Mobilegeddon), it would be sensible, if you haven’t already done so, to start looking at your options for creating a mobile-friendly version of your web site.

The fact that globally mobile traffic is about 30 percent of all internet activity, should be enough reason. “There are roughly 2 billion PCs in the world and more than 5 billion mobile devices. Thus it is inevitable that both mobile internet traffic and mobile search will ultimately surpass the PC globally” says SearchEngineLand.

In the BVI in the last year mobile search has averaged at 13.3% with tablet searches at 12.85%. For March 2015, this figure is 16.81% and 13.62%. In the USA, mobile searches in March were 26.29%.

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That’s just search, our client web sites are seeing visits from mobile devices and tablets in the region of 30%, with one site running at 38% mobile and tablet for the first quarter of 2015.

This announcement, made by Google on February 26, should be further encouragement to give your web visitors a better browsing experience on their mobile device or tablet.

When it comes to search on mobile devices, users should get the most relevant and timely results, no matter if the information lives on mobile-friendly web pages or apps. As more people use mobile devices to access the internet, our algorithms have to adapt to these usage patterns. In the past, we’ve made updates to ensure a site is configured properly and viewable on modern devices. We’ve made it easier for users to find mobile-friendly web pages and we’ve introduced App Indexing to surface useful content from apps. Today, we’re announcing two important changes to help users discover more mobile-friendly content:

More mobile-friendly websites in search results

Starting April 21, we will be expanding our 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.

Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.

To get help with making a mobile-friendly site, check out our guide to mobile-friendly sites. If you’re a webmaster, you can get ready for this change by using the following tools to see how Googlebot views your pages:

• If you want to test a few pages, you can use the Mobile-Friendly Test.

• If you have a site, you can use your Webmaster Tools account to get a full list of mobile usability issues across your site using the Mobile Usability Report.

2.   More relevant app content in search results

Starting today, we will begin to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed. As a result, we may now surface content from indexed apps more prominently in search. To find out how to implement App Indexing, which allows us to surface this information in search results, have a look at our step-by-step guide on the developer site.

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How mobile-friendly is your site? Google will tell you here.

All of the web sites we have rolled out recently checked out OK we’re please to say.

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