Google trial new algorithm

26th November, 2014

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There has been a fair amount of chitter chatter over the last week about mobile-friendly web design and Google’s official launch of the “Mobile-friendly” text label. The word is that this label will be positioned at the front of the snippet under the URL in their search result.

Google have also announced that they are trialling a new ranking algorithm for mobile friendly sites. Having shown that they recognise the mobile experience for some time now, by citing their Webmaster tools, such as the Mobile usability report and Webmasters Mobile Guide, it’s quite clear that they are encouraging us to prepare our sites to meet their mobile-friendly criteria.

It has not yet been confirmed how this ranking experiment will effect mobile friendly websites, still the very fact that (for well over a year now) Google have penalised sites for having bad mobile search or creating issues for mobile users, gives us reason to think it may benefit those who gain a mobile-friendly stamp. Surely those websites will be rewarded a ranking boost? As Search Engine Land put it… Sites that have gone above-and-beyond to earn a mobile-friendly stamp of approval by Google seem likely to get a boost over sites that haven’t.

Having a responsive and mobile-friendly website has long been a precedent for Nexus when we come to design and develop websites for our own clients and it seems this design choice may be a far more critical decision when updating your own website in the coming year and going forward. 

For further information on this topic, have a read of our article on understanding responsive web design and don’t forget to test your own website using the Mobile-Friendly Test to see if you may need to consider updating to a mobile-friendly site.

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