Editorial · April 18, 2015
Mobile-Friendly Website: What Google's Update Means
A mobile-friendly website will matter more in Google's mobile search ranking starting April 21. On February 26, 2015, Google said it will expand its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, one of the clues it uses to rank pages. Google says the change will affect mobile searches in every language worldwide, with a significant impact on its search results. Our editors suggest you test your pages this weekend. April 21 is only three days away.
What Google announced
"Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal," Google's blog post says.
Google had floated this ranking idea in November. On November 18, 2014, it began adding a "mobile-friendly" label to its mobile search results. It also said it was experimenting with the label's criteria as a ranking signal.
The February post gives no numbers on how much a site's mobile ranking could change. Google says it uses more than 200 signals, or clues, to work out what searchers want. Our editors' reading: being mobile-friendly should help in mobile search, but it does not guarantee a top spot.
What counts as mobile-friendly
Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller defined the term "mobile-friendly site" in October 2014. Such a site is easy to read and use on a smartphone, with only up and down scrolling. Having to swipe sideways to find content makes a site harder to use on a phone. So does zooming in to read text and use on-screen controls, or not seeing the content at all.
Google's November post lists four criteria for the "mobile-friendly" label. Googlebot is the program Google uses to find and download web pages. The post says a page is eligible for the label if Googlebot detects that it meets all four:
- It avoids software that is uncommon on mobile devices, such as Flash.
- Its text is readable without zooming.
- Its content fits the screen, so users do not have to scroll sideways or zoom.
- Its links are far enough apart that the right one is easy to tap.
Google's mobile guide says the version of a site that is not mobile-friendly requires visitors on a mobile device to pinch or zoom to read the content. They are likely to leave the site, it adds.
How to test your site
Start with Google's Mobile-Friendly Test at google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly. Type in a web page address and click Analyze. The test reports whether that page has a mobile-friendly design, Google says. It takes one address at a time, so run it on your home page and the pages customers use most.
Google Webmaster Tools is where site owners see Google's reports on their sites. If you have an account, open its Mobile Usability report too. Google says the report lists the mobile usability issues found across your whole site. When Google added it in October 2014, it listed these issues:
- Flash content
- A missing viewport tag (a line of code that tells a phone's browser how to set the page's width and scale)
- Tiny fonts
- Fixed-width viewports (the page is set to one fixed width, not the phone's width)
- Content not sized to the viewport (it does not fit the screen)
- Links or buttons that sit too close together
How to fix a site that fails
The fix can depend on how your site was built. Google recommends responsive web design. With it, your site sends the same code to every device, and the page changes its look to fit the screen.
If you use website software such as WordPress or Joomla, Google's guide has step-by-step pages for some common packages, plus general steps. Back up your site before you change anything. Update the software to the latest version, because in some cases that makes a site mobile-friendly. If your software offers themes (also called page templates), check yours. In the admin panel, look for words like "mobile" or "responsive" in the theme's documentation. If you chose a theme when you built the site, Google says, going mobile may be as simple as picking a new one.
If someone built the site for you, our editors suggest asking them to make it mobile-friendly, or hiring a developer. For that job, Google says to check a developer's references and a portfolio of mobile websites, and to ask about experience with responsive web design. Give the developer a list of the most common tasks you want to work well on the mobile site.
The cost varies, Google says. Going mobile can cost nothing if you choose a responsive theme or have the skills to build the site yourself. Hiring a developer will likely cost time and money. If your site is several years old, a new developer might suggest starting over.
If your site has a robots.txt file, check it too. It sits at the root of your site, for example yoursite.com/robots.txt, and marks the parts you do not want search engines to visit. Google says to always let Googlebot read your image files and the JavaScript and CSS files that control how your pages look and work, so it can see your site the way a visitor does. Blocking them, Google warns, can lead to weaker rankings. The robots.txt Tester in Webmaster Tools checks your file.
A plan for this weekend
Google's mobile guide says to judge a mobile site by how well customers can complete common tasks. Our editors suggest this order:
- Run Google's Mobile-Friendly Test on your home page and on the pages customers use most, such as your hours, directions, services and contact pages.
- Open those pages on your own phone. Can you find the street address and call the business without pinching or scrolling sideways?
- Back up your site, then fix what fails, starting with fixes that may be quick, such as a software update or a new theme. Test again.