Maximize your online strategy & search performance
In this presentation, learn to create an online strategy for your business, measure your search performance, and choose the right partner to design and manage your mobile website. The 3 topics are:
1. Choosing the right online channel
2. Webmaster Tools
3. SEO as a long term strategy
Basics of a mobile website for small and medium businesses
If you own a small business, this series of short videos will show you how easy it can be to make your web pages mobile-friendly. The 4-part series include:
1. Learn the tools: PageSpeed Insights, Mobile-Friendly Test and Mobile-Usability
2. Bring it in: Viewports, zoom and plugins
3. Focus on the user: Tap targets, margins and font sizes
4. Set it right: Redirects and canonicals
Q&A session
Here are answers to questions you asked about the mobile-friendly ranking change. Check the comments section here for answers to questions we weren’t able to get to during the live event.
Results from audience polls
Thousands of people participated in the 3 polls below. What are your thoughts on the results—surprising or predictable?
What device are you using to read this post? Of 871 responses, desktop/laptop and mobile phone usage only differed by 28 votes. View on Google+ and Twitter.
What do you dislike the most when browsing the web on your mobile device? Almost half of 570 respondents said their top frustration was waiting for slow pages to load. View on Google+ and Twitter.
What's the hardest part about having a mobile-friendly site? More than half of 490 respondents said it’s not hard to have a mobile-friendly site. However, 1 in 5 said it's technically challenging. View on Google+ and Twitter.
Download the one-sheeter so you can access and share these 5 steps to mobile-friendliness on-the-go.
Results from our 30 Day Challenge to go mobile-friendly
Many people took our 30 Day Challenge to make their sites mobile-friendly in March. Take a look at some of the responses we got at the end of the challenge.
Nicolas Chevallier: "Almost every sites we managed have been redesigned in RWD since the beginning of #mobilemadness"
Daniel Harrison: "Still working on the responsive design site. Hope to be 100% finished in 2 weeks."
Gina Gaudio-Graves: “Our site is now totally #mobilefriendly [...] And, many of our students sites are now #mobilefriendly as well! Thanks for the help!”
Andreas Becker: "just a few more days ... so many sites :) i think 90%"
April 21st’s mobile-friendly update boosts mobile search rankings for pages that are legible and usable on mobile devices.
This update:
Affects only search rankings on mobile devices
Affects search results in all languages globally
Applies to individual pages, not entire websites
While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal -- so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query.
To check if your site is mobile-friendly, you can examine individual pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test or check the status of your entire site through the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools. If your site’s pages aren’t mobile-friendly, there may be a significant decrease in mobile traffic from Google Search. But have no fear, once your site becomes mobile-friendly, we will automatically re-process (i.e., crawl and index) your pages. You can also expedite the process by using Fetch as Google with Submit to Index, and then your pages can be treated as mobile-friendly in ranking.
1. Will desktop and/or tablet ranking also be affected by this change?
No, this update has no effect on searches from tablets or desktops. It affects searches from mobile devices across all languages and locations.
2. Is it a page-level or site-level mobile ranking boost?
It’s a page-level change. For instance, if ten of your site’s pages are mobile-friendly, but the rest of your pages aren’t, only the ten mobile-friendly pages can be positively impacted.
3. How do I know if Google thinks a page on my site is mobile-friendly?
Individual pages can be tested for “mobile-friendliness” using the Mobile-Friendly Test.
Test individual URLs in real-time with the Mobile-Friendly Test.
To review site-level information on mobile-friendliness, check out the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools. This feature’s data is based on the last time we crawled and indexed your site’s pages.
Mobile Usability in Webmaster Tools provides a snapshot of your entire site’s mobile-friendliness.
4. Unfortunately, my mobile-friendly pages won’t be ready until after April 21st. How long before they can be considered mobile-friendly in ranking?
We determine whether a page is mobile-friendly every time it’s crawled and indexed -- you don’t have to wait for another update. Once a page is mobile-friendly, you can wait for Googlebot for smartphones to naturally (re-)crawl and index the page or you can expedite processing by using Fetch as Google with Submit to Index in Webmaster Tools. For a large volume of URLs, consider submitting a sitemap. In the sitemap, if your mobile content uses pre-existing URLs (such as with Responsive Web Design or dynamic serving), also include the lastmod tag.
5. Since the mobile ranking change rolls out on April 21st, if I see no drop in traffic on April 22nd, does that mean that my site’s rankings aren't impacted?
You won't be able to definitively determine whether your site’s rankings are impacted by the mobile-friendly update by April 22nd. While we begin rolling out the mobile-friendly update on April 21st, it’ll be a week or so before it makes its way to all pages in the index.
6. I have a great mobile site, but the Mobile-Friendly Test tells me that my pages aren't mobile-friendly. Why?
If a page is designed to work well on mobile devices, but it’s not passing the Mobile-Friendly Test, the most common reason is that Googlebot for smartphones is blocked from crawling resources, like CSS and JavaScript, that are critical for determining whether the page is legible and usable on a mobile device (i.e., whether it’s mobile-friendly). To remedy:
Check if the Mobile-Friendly Test shows blocked resources (often accompanied with a partially rendered image).
The most common reason why a mobile page fails the Mobile-Friendly Test is that Googlebot for smartphones is blocked from crawling resources, like CSS and JavaScript, that are crucial for understanding the page’s mobile-friendliness.
To reiterate, we recommend that site owners allow Googlebot to crawl all resources for a page (including CSS, JavaScript, and images), so that we can properly render, index, and in this case, assess whether the page is mobile-friendly.
7. What if I link to a site that’s not mobile-friendly?
Your page can still be “mobile-friendly” even if it links to a page that’s not mobile-friendly, such as a page designed for larger screens, like desktops. It’s not the best experience for mobile visitors to go from a mobile-friendly page to a desktop-only page, but hopefully as more sites become mobile-friendly, this will become less of a problem.
8. Does Google give a stronger mobile-friendly ranking to pages using Responsive Web Design (which uses the same URL and the same HTML for the desktop and mobile versions) vs. hosting a separate mobile site (like www for desktop and m.example.com for mobile)?
No, mobile-friendliness is assessed the same, whether you use responsive web design (RWD), separate mobile URLs, or dynamic serving for your configuration. If your site uses separate mobile URLs or dynamic serving, we recommend reviewing the Mobile SEO guide to make sure Google is properly crawling and indexing your mobile pages.
9. Will my site / page disappear on mobile search results if it's not mobile-friendly?
While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal -- so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query.
Specialized FAQs
10. What if my audience is desktop only? Then there’s no reason to have a mobile site, right?
Not exactly. Statistics show that more people are going “mobile only” -- either because they never had a desktop or because they won’t replace their existing desktop. Additionally, a non-mobile-friendly site may not see many mobile visitors precisely for that reason.
The mobile-friendly update will apply to mobile searches conducted across all sites, regardless of the site’s target audiences’ language, region, or proportion of mobile to desktop traffic.
11. I have pages showing mobile usability errors because they embed a YouTube video. What can I do?
We suggest paying close attention to how the YouTube video is embedded. If you are using the “old-style” <object> embeds in the mobile page, convert to <iframe> embeds for broader compatibility. YouTube now uses the HTML5 player on the web by default, so it’s mobile-friendly to embed videos using the <iframe> tags from the “share” feature on the watch page or from the YouTube iFrame API. If you have a more complex integration, that should also be mobile-friendly, since it’ll instruct the device to use the device’s native support.
For Flash content from sites other than YouTube, check if there is an equivalent HTML5 embed tag or code snippet to avoid using proprietary plugins.
Yes, we suggest a minimum of 7mm width/height for primary tap targets and a minimum margin of 5mm between secondary tap targets. The average width of an adult's finger pad is 10mm, and these dimensions can provide a usable interface while making good use of screen real estate.
13. To become mobile-friendly quickly, we’re thinking of creating a very stripped down version of our site (separate mobile pages) until our new responsive site is complete. Do you foresee any problems with this?
First, keep in mind that we support three mobile configurations and that your website doesn't have to be responsive to be mobile-friendly. In response to your question, please be cautious about creating a “stripped down” version of your site. While the page may be formatted for mobile, if it doesn’t allow your visitors to easily complete their common tasks or have an overall smooth workflow, it may become frustrating to your visitors and perhaps not worth the effort. Should a temporary mobile site be created, once the RWD is live, be sure to move the site properly. For example, update all links so they no longer reference the separate mobile URLs and 301 redirect mobile URLs to their corresponding RWD version.
As part of this launch, we’re also introducing support for schema.org structured data for websites to signal to our algorithms:
The website name to be used instead of the domain name
The URL structure of the URL as breadcrumbs
For more details and code examples, please see our structured data documentation for providing site names and breadcrumbs.
These changes are rolling out gradually and affect only mobile results. The site name change is US-only for now and breadcrumbs are rolling out worldwide.
As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please ask in the Webmaster Help Forum.
Posted by Bartlomiej Niechwiej, Software Engineer, and Rob Ennals, Product Manager
With the addition of these install links, we are starting to use App Indexing as a ranking signal for all users on Android, regardless of whether they have your app installed or not. We hope that Search will now help you acquire new users, as well as re-engage your existing ones. To get started, visit g.co/AppIndexing and to learn more about the other ways you can integrate with Google Search, visit g.co/DeveloperSearch.
