Bookassist Blog Google’s Mobile Update

Google begins rolling out a mobile friendly search algorithm update on April 21, and expects to take a few weeks to complete the change. The purpose of the change is targeted at the fast-growing cohort of mobile users who use Google search and will highlight those sites in search results which are optimised for mobile viewing. A simple example is shown below, where Google is now inserting the “Mobile-friendly” tag into the page description of search results, in this case a Bookassist-designed hotel website with an optimised webapp. While having the “Mobile-friendly” tag on search results for your website may or may not influence the searcher’s opinion on whether to access your information or not, the real issue is that over time those sites that are not mobile optimised will begin to drop in mobile search results. Given that, for many searches, Google local information already takes up half the screen, it’s not wise to allow your site result to drop any further than first or second position. Also, there are no different degrees of friendliness - either your site is deemed to be mobile friendly or not by Google and you can’t influence that decision other than to meet their criteria. You can check if your website is considered mobile friendly at this address: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ Note that ALL Bookassist-built responsive sites and mobile webapps are classified as “Mobile-friendly” by Google’s new search algorithm.