Google starts favoring mobile optimized websites in search algorithms
Today Google made a major change in how its proprietary search algorithms rank Web search results; now websites that have been optimized for mobile viewing will be ranked higher than sites that aren’t designed to be easily accessed from a smartphone or tablet.
Business Insider dubbed the change Mobilegeddon and suggested the change could “crush millions of small businesses.”
Google staffers Takaki Makino, Chaesang Jung and Doantam Phan laid out some tenets of the change in a Feb. 26, post to the company’s official blog.
The trio dubbed the change a push toward “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.”
From the post: “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.”
The mobile-friendliness continues with the aforementioned app indexing, which will be factored into ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed.
Itai Sadan, CEO of website creation firm Duda, told Business Insider, “I think the people who are at risk are those who don’t know about it.”
“Come April 21, a lot of small businesses are going to be really surprised that the number of visitors to their websites have dropped significantly,” he said. “This is going to affect millions of sites on the Web.
“Google has always been about relevancy, and content is king. But that’s changing,” he continued. “Yes, they’re saying content is still extremely important, but user experience is just as important. It’s not sufficient to have all the right content — if people come to your site and the content is there but it’s not readable, that’s not good.”
