Google’s ‘Mobile-Friendly’ Update is Here – Are You Missing Out?

If you are one of the websites that are still not mobile friendly in this digitally driven world, then this is a major wake up call for you. Google has announced that their latest mobile algorithm update will favour pages that are mobile-friendly when users search on their mobile devices.They maintain that these changes have been made to improve users’ search experience given that an increasing proportion of search activity occurs via the mobile device.

Make mobile your friend

Although the algorithm affects individual pages and not entire websites, the update means that sites that are not customised for mobile devices will most likely miss out on search results. Surprisingly though, 40% of Fortune 500 companies still do not have a mobile-friendly website, a clear disadvantage in an increasingly mobile-centric environment.

Image Source: Mobile-Friendly Test by Google

However, merely re-adjusting the current desktop friendly websites to ‘mobile versions’ does not make the site mobile-friendly. Some of the features for a site to be mobile-friendly includes the need to have fonts that are large enough to read plus media elements such as videos which are viewable on a mobile screen.

One corollary of this uplift in mobile search activity is that adspend in this arena will in turn experience substantial growth. As we observe in our latest research on Digital Advertising, mobile advertising is set to see substantial growth in the coming years as more people opt to carry out their online activities such as search, social networking, payments etc via smartphones and tablets.