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Are you a mobile fiend or friend?

You may remember earlier in the year we wrote, that Google started labeling mobile friendly sites in their searches.  And more importantly they started penalising those that were not mobile friendly in their search results.

Well you may have noticed that in the last couple of weeks the “mobile friendly” tag has been removed from the Google search results page on your mobile.

Where is the tag?

Google had noted that the vast majority of results were now conforming to mobile friendly so the tag was losing it’s relevancy.

Will this affect my ranking?

In short, no, this will not affect your ranking. Your ranking before the removal of the tag will remain the same, but that’s not to forget that if your site is still not mobile friendly it will have the same handicap as it did while the tag was in effect. So the lesson is you still need to have a mobile responsive website not just because you are still handicapped by Google but because you are still handicapping your customers when they land on your site while using a mobile device. Your customers user experience is crucial to them finding the information they need and want as quickly and effective as possible. You may be losing customers for this one simple fact, if you have an analytics program for your sites usage just check the bounce rate from mobile users the story will be clear.

Another announcement from Google

Google also announced that during 2017 they will also start punishing the use of non-friendly interstitials on mobile. If you have annoying pop ups on your site it might be time to view your use of them.

You can learn more about these announcements here.

At the end of the day, Google is doing what all good web development companies do, which is creating an environment for their end users to have a seamless experience when viewing their site and sites that they link to.

If you would like to discuss any of these changes and what they mean for your business please do not hesitate to contact us.