Mobile Friendly Algorithm – Google new release

It’s not a news anymore that Google will release a new algorithm, the Mobile Friendly Algorithm that will have a big impact on mobile searches (it will not impact tablet searches and it’s not site-wide).

The questions is: Will your website survive a possible penalty? We hope so because this algorithm that will be released April 21, 2015 and it’s supposed to have a really big impact on your business. If your website uses responsive design, like Design19, your website should already be prepared for the upcoming algorithm changes.

Here are some of the best articles in online marketing we read recently on this topic:

Is Your Website Mobile-Friendly? 3 Tools to Help You Prepare for Google’s Next Algorithm Update (Hubspot)

Besides the 4 most common reasons for which a website isn’t mobile-friendly according to Hubspot, we should add the flash usage, as pages that include flash content cannot be viewed on mobile devices. Here’s more about Look and Feel in the Web Fundamentals guide

Will Your Website Survive the Upcoming Google Mobile Penalty? (Copyblogger)

Copyblogger offers a “last-minute” solution you can still apply for your website (if your website doesn’t use responsive design) and reminds us the criterias detected by Googlebot in labeling a ‘mobile-friendly website’.

Prepare Landing Pages for Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Algorithm, Beginning April 21 (Designmodo)

How to avoid “mobile friendly” mistakes and some examples of responsive design solutions for your landing pages. If you’re looking for more examples of great mobile website design that can serve you as inspiration check them out!

If you checked the messages from your Google Webmaster Tools account and received one related to fixing mobile usability issues on your website, errors of non-mobile pages that affect users’ experience on your website….well, it’s time to fix them (until it’s not too late as we have been warned). Those pages with errors will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google and therefore will not be displayed and ranked for smartphone users in the SERP. For some websites, the algorithm will bring in a penalization and for others a ranking boost.

As a conclusion, always take into consideration Google’s ultimate goal: a quality user experience therefore build your website accordingly, with this goal in mind.  Understand that having a properly friendly and optimized site for mobile search is an imperative as mobile search is starting to gain ground to desktop searches.