Google's New Algo and How It Affects You.....

March 21st, 2015

Google is rolling out a new ranking factor for mobile. On April 21st, 2015 Google is adding an algorithm to it's mobile ranking system that will benefit any website that is "mobile friendly". Google realizes that more and more people are searching the web with their mobile phones and tablets so Google wants every (or the most possible) website to be mobile friendly.

What does mobile friendly mean? It means that when people search and find a website on their mobile phones, the website will "fit" into the screen size. Google realizes that people will scroll up and down on their phones to peruse a website but they don't like to scroll side to side. Traditional websites were sized to fit the desktop. They didn't fit the screen size of tablets and mobile phones.

In recent years webmasters have started to install a mobile friendly template onto their sites so that when people found them on their phones, the site would "fit" within the parameters of the phone screen size. One drawback to this solution was that the mobile template (the overall look of the website) was, in many instances, different than the main website itself.

So webmasters started looking for a different solution. What they came up with (and what Google prefers) was a responsive style website. What needed to be done was somehow the website itself would have to realize what device was trying to access it's files and then present the website in a manner that was consistent with the device itself. In general, this is how it's done. Within the core coding of the website itself, code would be imputed that would control the way the website was presented on the end users device. So, for example, if someone on a cell phone was trying to find LMS Website Services, then the site would realize "Hey, a cell phone user is trying to load me". This would trigger the code behind the scenes and the website would reconfigure itself and move certain elements around so that they fit the mobile phone screen size in a pleasing manner. No scrolling side to side. No small text to try and read. The text would re size itself also to make it more readable on the smaller screens.

In the past, a website that was not mobile friendly would rank just as high as a site that was mobile friendly but as of April 21st, that will not be the case. Google wants all websites to be mobile friendly and they will rank (and show in search results) mobile friendly sites higher (everything else considered being the same). Google's intent, in my opinion, is in the end to only present mobile friendly sites in their search results. They want the user experience to be enhanced and a non mobile friendly website showing on a mobile phone is, in their opinion, not a good user experience. So now that mobile friendly appears in Google's algorithm (affecting page rank and position in search results), this would be an important time to reconfigure your website to be mobile friendly if it isn't already.

So, is your website mobile friendly? If not, your position in Google's search results is going to be adversely affected. As the times change, Google changes so we must change. Get your website mobile friendly. It's important!

Nuff said eh..........