What does the Google mobile friendly update mean?
Everyone has experienced the incessant frustration while using only desktop optimised websites; the endless cycle of scrolling and zooming only to be let down by the tiny hyperlinks either not working or that you clicked six of them at once as their size is negligible.
Luckily Google has released a mobile friendly update in order to solve this issue. The new algorithm that rewards websites with mobile optimisation and faster loading times, any website that does not meet these standards have dropped in search results significantly. This has forced companies to quickly adapt in order to save their websites from becoming obsolete in the eyes of Google.
Though speed will become more of a factor in determining the order of search results, the change is not so drastic as to make it the only factor. There will be some occasions that slow pages still rank highly – for example, like when they have the most relevant content related to the search input.
Google says the update will only affect pages that “deliver the slowest experience to users” and it will only affect a small percentage of queries.
Google has been pushing this agenda for some time, prioritising pages that have faster loading times. In February 2016, it began to highlight AMP (pages using its Accelerated Mobile Page technology to speed up mobile rendering) in search results.
To increase mobile optimization and reduce panic from companies, Google also released a ‘mobile friendly test’ and follow these rules that the algorithm will respond to, in turn increasing the amount of search results your website gets.
- Responsive design: Uses a single HTML source that renders differently based on the display size. The page will adapt in size in order to fit the size of the screen device, even its a 4 inch phone screen or 50 inch TV.
- Dynamic serving: Delivers different HTML for different devices but uses the same URL regardless of the device type. Meaning you must code for different types of devices (usually the most common types) the website must recognise the device and send the specific HTML reserved to best optimise for that device.
- Mobile website: Uses separate URLs for different devices. The least used standard as it is time consuming to build, you must recreate an entire webpage that is optimized for devices.
All of these factors increase speed, efficiency and enjoyment while using the website, allowing users to fully focus on your content and maybe even come back for more.
Indexed apps are also being optimised. For anyone that is uncertain of what an indexed app is, here is Google’s description:
App Indexing lets Google index apps just like websites. Deep links to your Android app appear in Google Search results, letting users get to your native mobile experience quickly, landing exactly on the right content within your app.
In practical terms, this means when you search for content on a browser and that information is also in an app (such as movie query searched into google will typically go to the IMDb webpage which is also an app) it will display the app and prompt a download. Now, these indexed apps will be more optimised too.
Despite the mobile friendly update causing some chaos in many companies, sparking the hashtags #mobilegeddon, it is a long overdue update that will provide a much more enjoyable experience to access the abundance of information known as the internet.