Google Mobile Friendly change - Things you need to know

[Liam Dilley]

Already seeing misunderstandings about the google mobile friendly change, just the same as the HTTPS stuff.

Here are some key points to know and understand. All this is from the official information on the google site and their blog:

1. Desktop and tablet ranking will NOT be effected, this change is for searches from mobile devices across all languages and locations. Thus JUST for mobiles.

What this means is that your site is NOT going to loose its ranking now, it wont just drop off ranking if your searching on computers. This is very important to understand.

2. This is a page level ranking change.

So we covered its just mobile, and the other important note is that it is JUST page level ranking, not the overall site ranking.

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. This is a change that effects what google thinks is a mobile friendly page.

This is your third key point here. If your site is not mobile friendly it will not be effected. All of you jumping on to make sites mobile friendly thinking this will boost your ranking are mistaken. If you are jumping on trying to make your site mobile friendly and not do a good job, this will harm your website ranking on mobile devices.

This change effects work you have done to make your PAGES (remember this is page level not site level) mobile friendly. This change means google wants you to make your mobile friendly site better.

4. It will take about a week before you will see googles ranking change take effect

5. You think your site is mobile friendly but the google ranking is marking you down?

This does not mean you got a bad mobile friendly site, you may have but you may not. Make sure CSS and javascript files are not blocked for robots. If you have robots.txt blocking css and javascript folders (which many people do) then google can not crawl them and look for media queriers and similar to say "yep they have the mobile stuff".

6. A mobile friendly page can link to non mobile friendly pages, this wont effect ranking.

There are a lot more other detail elements you can read here:

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: FAQs about the April 21st mobile-friendly update

But the key points are:

• Affects only search rankings on mobile devices (NOT desktop or tablet)
• Affects search results in all languages globally
• Applies to individual pages, not entire websites
• Effects pre existing mobile friendly pages or what google thinks is not mobile friendly (does not mean if you rush job a mobile friendly site your site ranking will improve)

[studiomigo]

Thanks Liam for clearing this. Some of your points contradict with BC blog:

New Google's mobile-friendly rules and Business Catalyst

In the blog Diana (or Olga) state that the desktop version will also be affected.

What worries me is that BC's mobile version generator (templates) is not supported by these new rules which means all sites must be 'responsive' which is ridicules. I actually tested a couple of my BC sites in Google's Mobile Friendly Test page and the result was "Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly." So I am confused. Do I need to convert my websites that use BC's mobile templates to be responsive or not?

Thanks

Micha

[Liam Dilley · Accepted solution]

I know it does,

That blog is wrong and that is a shame. You can click the google link and see - FROM GOOGLE that is defiantly NOT THE CASE. For me, it gets a bit frustrating when I see big misunderstandings about SEO. I am no expert but at least I read and listen to what google say.

The New rules will cover mobile generated, again and indication to that is not true. Google as what it has become apparent now wraps both mobile dedicated and mobile responsive sites into the term "mobile friendly" and not separate entities.

It is important to know as well that google has actually ran the "mobile friendly" notification and SOME level of ranking for some time, an older version has been part of webmaster tools and that "mobile friendly" note in search results around for a while. The key change here is its a new algorithm, new focus, new check tool and FOR MOBILE a bigger ranking factor.

Read what google says, read around the web, do not read from one blog post. I did ask BC to look at that blog post written by Olga - Its not correct.

Google, as you can also see on their blog have said for the full effects it will take a couple, if not a few weeks for people to start seeing the changes.

We at Pretty have also seen some issues already with what google have done. Webmaster tools in its indications may find some pages not mobile friendly - These pages are pages that are there, but 301 redirected to other pages which, when you run the new test tool show as friendly. This causes a bit of a conflict in Google, so we looked to remove the pages altogether and keep the redirect.

Remember though, google, changes and ranking always takes time to fully take effect from this to your SEO content quality and more. Also remember this is a PAGE change not a SITE ranking change (key point)

There will also be a lot of people using this as a scare tactic, for anyone out there - Do not just jump on a company saying you need to do this or you will rank down in google - They just

[studiomigo]

Thanks Liam

Hopefully Adobe's blog team will remove or correct that blog.

Cheers

Micha

[Liam Dilley]

I just had a look, you should as well.

http://www.businesscatalyst.com/bc-blog/new-googles-mobile-friendly-rules-and-business-catalyst

It has actually been edited quite a bit now, some things are still not quite right but at least it does not have the completely incorrect statements like how it would effect all your search rankings.