From April 21st 2015 google will be implementing mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal when searching via a mobile device see article. For a while now google has been displaying an indicator against mobile search results to show websites as being mobile friendly.

For example search for is my site mobile friendly on a mobile device and you will get

notice the Mobile-Friendly indicator, as opposed to from a desktop

The change basically for your site comes down to one factor; has your site has been optimised for mobile

If it has not then its probably before the 21st April a little too late to make the necessary changes. So your site for mobile searches at least may fall down the rankings whether this will happen will remain to be seen though others understandings seem to indicate the change is bigger than the introduction of Panda and Penguin.

Google provides two means of determining your sites mobile friendliness

i) An online mobile tester see link This provides the ability to test on a page by page basis your sites mobile friendlyness

ii) Google webmaster tools see link note you will need to be signed up to google webmaster tools and have your site verified for this to work.

Using the mobile tester for two sites I have visited earlier shows two contrasting results

www.metoffice.co.uk

www.explore.co.uk

The met office should have no problems come the 21st April.

On the over side googles tester indicates that explore worldwide has mobile issues notice if you exand the imge how google provides indicators as to what it deems to be wrong

If we look at the homepage for a rival company Exodus www.exodus.co.uk

google reports the site is mobile friendly. In theory from 21st April ny search on a mobile device for small group adventure travel could rank exodus above explore worldwide. Currently explore are ranked 2 on page 1 when searching for this term, exodus are on page 2. Note any paid search results will not be affected.

The google page 1 results pn the 19th April 2015 for the term small group adventure travel is as follows:

I will post the result of the search on the 21st April to see if anything has changed.
So what can be done to make a site mobile friendly? I will provide a follow up article on the current methods in the coming days.

 

21st April Update

So todays the day of what has become mobilegeddon, google has confirmed the update has started rolling out. A quick test throughout the day of the travel term small group adventure travel has shown no changes. Others are indicating that they believe it could take a week for the changes to become evident.

29th June Update

Well a full two months after mobile ranking  was rolled out I thought i would review my search criteria for small group adventure travel to see if the 2 websites i indicated hand changed positions

Page 1 now has

This is showing the results without the adverts; notice how positions 2 and 3 are for pages that have not been flagged as mobile friendly; exodus still appears on page 2. In fact on page 1 only the gaadventures site has moved down the list. What does this tell us; my thory is that the content of the pages is more highly ranking than the mobile site signal.

Checking googles mobile website check shows both the explore and imaginative traveller pages in these search results fail the mobile friendly test.

Obviously my analysis of just one search term is a minimal sample  but does appear strange and seems the worry of mobilegeddon may have just been that a worry.