Is your website Mobile friendly? If not, please go for it before April 21.. otherwise you will have to suffer a drop in search engine rankings on Google.

Yes, Google has recently announced an algorithm update that states-

“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searchers in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact on our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

They go on to say: “ When it comes to search on mobile devices, users should get the most relevant and timely results, no matter if the information lives on mobile friendly web pages or apps. As more people use mobile devices to access Internet, our algorithms have to adapt to these usage patterns.”

This recent Google update affects only mobile search results and has a much greater potential to affect search engine rankings on a real-time basis. Further Google will be deciding whether a page on any website is mobile friendly on a “page by page” basis. So, passing some pages or most of the pages as mobile friendly doesn’t means that your entire site passes the test. So, all pages must be mobile-friendly.

This algorithm is applied on a real time basis that means you will easily be able to benefit of making your mobile site friendly. Googlebot crawls your pages and determines that they are newly mobile friendly.

App Indexing Will Give Higher Rankings

Google has made it easier for users to find mobile-friendly web pages and they have introduced App indexing to surface useful content from apps.

Google states that this will again be a ranking factor if users have the app installed on their device.

Other search engines like Yahoo and Bing are also most likely to follow suit and give preference to mobile friendliness in a website.

It’s Time to Get Ready for the Changes-

If your website is not mobile friendly, its time to follow Google guidelines.

To detect whether, your site is mobile friendly or not, use Google’s latest mobile-friendly testing tool that gives your website a “pass” or “fail” grade depending upon its being mobile friendly or not. In addition to it, Google has also implemented a new section in the menu of Webmaster Tools which indicates a site’s Mobile usability. Google also shared those factors that are limiting specific pages’ ability to rank, which pages are showing that error and when the error was last detected.

So what sort of errors are showing up on mobile usability testing results? These errors address specific questions like-

• Small font size
• Touch Elements Too Close
• Content not sized to viewport
• Viewport not configured

Summary-

April 21 is a month away so prepare yourself to stay ahead on Google’s search results else your website will be penalized with low rankings and in turn affect its performance.