Google's "Mobile Friendly" Designation

Google is rolling out a “mobile-friendly” indicator in it’s SERPs for sites it considers mobile friendly.

There’s talk that getting that designation will give a rankings boost (presumably for mobile searches). Apparently over a year ago they started penalizing sites which had particularly bad mobile experiences, so rewarding mobile friendly sites would seem logical.

If you’re wondering if your sites are mobile friendly enough to get the label - Google has a Webmaster Tool for that… Just put in your URL and it will tell you whether you pass the test.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

I’m sort of groaning right now. I need another major project right now like I need a hole in the head. The only sites of mine that pass the test are the new ones I’m building. All my existing sites need to be reworked - even my forum which uses a responsive theme. On the forum some pages pass, others don’t. So that means it’s not enough to be responsive.

Re: Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Designation

Here’s an example of it in action…

So it thinks the pages on Breeding Zone are mobile friendly, but doesn’t think rawtop.com or Raunchy Fuckers is mobile friendly. Curiously my Twitter page doesn’t get the mobile-friendly badge (and failed to fetch in the GWT mobile friendly testing tool), but someone else’s Twitter page does get the mobile-friendly label.

But the bottom line is - how much out of your way do you go for mobile traffic? Does it convert? I can see putting some effort in on mobile since it’s growing (fast), but desktop is still our bread and butter - right? (Unless you run social sites - then it’s critical, IMHO).

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Re: Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Designation

I compared a mobile search to a desktop search for “pool sales” which I thought was generic enough.
Turns out that mobile friendly sites got MUCH more prominence on my phone while the desktop yielded non-mobile results.

Re: Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Designation

not seen this tool before. Through it i noticed there is a mobile page with info in Googles Webmaster Tools too.

Re: Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Designation

Are tablets considered mobile?

Re: Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Designation

I am not seeing the label when I do a search with my iPad, so apparently not.

Re: Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Designation

That’s good to know :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Kevin.

Re: Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Designation

How does one make his site mobile friendly if the site’s theme is responsive already?

Re: Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Designation

Responsive is mobile friendly (or should be if designed properly). The benefit of using a responsive design is your listings will appear in searches by mobile users as well… If you site wasn’t responsive/mobile friendly you may not get listed as Google may select more mobile friendly sites instead to list.

Kevin.

Re: Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Designation

Not necessarily true. The other key thing is that links not be too close to each other - it creates a problem for touch devices.

Then there are the static elements on the page - they can’t be too wide.

Viewport has to be declared.

And so on…

I don’t think any of those items are part of “responsive”.

Re: Google’s “Mobile Friendly” Designation

[QUOTE=rawTOP;154600]
I don’t think any of those items are part of “responsive”.[/QUOTE]

They are if designed properly…

I have responsive layouts that adjust font size and spacing according to the size of the device viewing the page. As the screen gets smaller font sizes increase along with padding, margins, borders and so on all through css. You can even hide or reorder entire divs via java script so they fit nicer on smaller devices. Good for turning a multi-column page for desktop view into single column for mobile.

Are you referring to images as static elements? Those will also shrink proportionally as the screen gets smaller. Even Video players work nice. Java script detects if flash is available and if so supplies a 640x480 (or what ever size you like) flash player… If flash isn’t detected falls back to HTML5 video. Also both the Flash and HTML5 video players resize proportionately as screen size shrinks or expands.

I built mine over a year ago using Dream Weavers Fluid Grid… I tested the site in the test link you supplied above and Google gave it all green lights as mobile friendly :slight_smile: One HTML page that adjusts automatically based on screen size, not dependent upon detecting user agents and redirecting to different pages (The old fashioned way).

Kevin.