Google Google now warning owners if site not mobile-friendly

[enlytend]

For a while now, Google has been displaying a "mobile friendly" tag on results in the mobile serps that meet their critera for being friendly to smartphone / tablet users.

Now they've taken it a step further. If you're using Webmaster Tools, expect a message like this for sites which are geared toward desktop only:

To: webmaster of YourDomainName.tld

Google systems have tested xx pages from your site and found that 100% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these xx pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.

(The bold text is mine.)

The message goes on to advise of steps you can take to alleviate the problem.

It's somewhat interesting that in my entire account they only flagged one site which doesn't get much traffic to begin with ... not sure why that site triggered the message while several others did not (yet?)...

Note that being able to "pinch and zoom" does NOT make your site count as mobile friendly. They are giving the label to sites which are responsive or have a separate mobile version.

How important is this to address? How much of your traffic now and in the recent past is mobile? On most of the sites I monitor, it's well over 50%. Even though it's (currently) just plain gray text, that little "mobile friendly" label is definitely noticeable when I do a search from my phone ...

 

[mikesmithnew]

Mobile is the future of Internet. No one can ignore the traffic from mobile devices. Without a mobile friendly website, we may lose potential customers.

I have read the news few weeks back in search engine roundtable. Nice to see the same here.

 

[enlytend]

FYI, word is they're starting to whack sites which have received a warning from the mobile results. I still haven't figured out how they're prioritizing sites to pick on...

 

[mhdoc]

I got one of those for my main site. Following links in it I found that I apparently have "View Port" issues. Researching that I believe it means I am not using a responsive WordPress theme.

So I will be changing themes as soon as possible. Not how I planned to spend the week.

 

[enlytend]

Responsive or a separate mobile site. Not too bad to switch a Wordpress theme, I have some non wordpress sites. So far got warnings about 3 of them. Two are expendable, the 3rd is not. Fortunately it was built on a bootstrap framework so just néed to tweak, but as in your case, not how I wanted to spend my time!

 

[mhdoc]

Of course since I have to change things anyhow this would be a "great" time to fix all those little issues and freshen up the content. Scope creap is such an insidous temptation.

I'm going to try moving it to the Rainmaker platform in an effort to avoid the hosting, plugin and coding issues I hate.

 

[enlytend]

Just be very careful of making too many drastic changes at once! Just going to a different theme could push things around enough to have an effect.

The worst likely impact from taking my site responsive will be adsense, because I'm using a sidebar ad and it will either flow over or under the content. But it doesn't make much from that so its expendible - I could remove it alltogether.

Really baffled by how they're picking the sites they warn - I'm sure they'll eventually complain about all of them, but my first 2 have little to nothing in common with the 3rd.

 

[mhdoc]

Mine said 163 of 163 total pages had issues. Maybe targeting sites with the most obvious problems first?

 

[enlytend]

Mine said 163 of 163 total pages had issues. Maybe targeting sites with the most obvious problems first?

But if it's not mobile friendly, all of your pages will be affected regardless. The first 2 of mine were smaller with much less activity than the 3rd.

 

[enlytend]

So I just popped my sites into Google Analytics. One of them was such a non-entity that I'm not even running analytics on it.

Smaller site (second one they reported) - This is a virtually dead affiliate site, Google hates it anyway. Last year it only had about 400 visits from Google search (less than 15% of its total traffic) and only 44% of those were from mobile.Hardly enough data to be statistically significant, but FWIW bounce rate was a few points higher, number of pages per session was just marginally lower. Avg. time on site was actually HIGHER for mobile users. I'm not rushing to update this site for 7% of some non-existent traffic - this one goes on the back burner.

Larger site - About 71% of my traffic last year was from Google search, about 49% of that mobile. It's a seasonal site and in season gets around 15,000 visits / month. Mobile bounce rate was higher, pages per session was lower, time on site was lower, so it looks like mobile users were slightly (though not dramatically) less happy with the site. Due to the amount of traffic it gets from Google organic search, this one I'm updating, hoping to get back in their good graces before summer. I'm not convinced it will be better for users because it has some comparison tables which won't translate well to a responsive display, but I have a couple ideas to work around that.

Looked at a few sites without warnings - data's all over the place. A couple of them get MORE mobile traffic from Google, a couple get less but the engagement looks a better ... no pattern that I could spot. Looks pretty random, but may be some logic known only to them...

Google Analytics Lesson:
For anyone who wants to know how to find their mobile traffic stats from Google search:

1) Pick your site from the dashboard and set the date range you want to check
2) From Acquisiton -> All Traffic -> Source/Medium and click on Google Organic (if you want to see other engines at the same time, just click on Source/Medium and used the Advanced link on the right to filter what you want)
3) Click on Secondary Dimension. Choose Users -> Mobile (Including Tablet). If you want to split this up more, choose something like Mobile Device Info and optionally use Advanced to filter.

 

[ablaye]

I am getting those too. I wonder how this affect the search results on mobile devices.

 

[Tia Wood]

I wrote an article with some helpful suggestions on my current blog. Copy and pasting here:

Don't Panic: How to Make a Website Mobile Friendly After a Google Warning

It’s expected that over 2 billion mobile devices will make mobile commerce transactions online by 2017.

If you’ve heard the terms ‘responsive design‘ and ‘mobile friendliness‘ and shrugged it off as a passing fad, unfortunately search engines are going to start rewarding sites that are mobile friendly by pushing down sites that are not.

In other words: your site will be pushed down below other websites that are mobile friendly when someone visits Google on a mobile device regardless of your normal rankings.

Quick Test: is your site already mobile friendly?
Your site may already be mobile friendly. Try resizing your browser. Does your website adjust as you scale it up and down?

Next, visit your website from a tablet and a smart phone. Does the ratio seem to adjust when compared to the desktop layout?

Check your existing site on Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

If all the above checks out your site theme may already be mobile friendly however let’s hear it from Google themselves.

Enter your URL at the Mobile-Friendly Test tool. Don’t forget to test sub domains or sub websites that may use a different theme or framework.

If you pass, exhale and pat your web developer on the back. You’re done.

Join Webmaster Tools
Join Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools. Just as Google Analytics is a monitor for site traffic, think of webmaster tools as a monitor for search crawling: crawl errors, warnings, dead links, sitemap submission and more and all kinds of information that allow you to see why your site might be deindexed or lose ranking.

It’s also where Google sent out direct warnings about mobility issues.

My site failed. Now what?
This is where the panic begins to set in. You still have a few options.

Ask your web developer to update your current theme.

Simple websites and uncomplicated themes can be updated with a few adjustments to the CSS and layout. Remember: just because a site appears simple doesn’t mean it actually is.

There may be many factors your web developer needs to consider before making adjustments so it’s advised to ask for an evaluation forwarding the results of the Mobile-Friendly Test and weighing the other options below before insisting on this option.

Switch your theme.

Unfortunately your web developer may not be familiar enough with responsive design or your layout may be too technically difficult to make the switch.

If your site theme is older than a couple of years consider switching the layout. Most modern themes come with responsiveness. ThemeForest.net has tons of them.

Create a separate mobile friendly site.

If all else fails consider making a special sub directory or sub domain for mobile use only. This is typically done at http://mobile.yourwebsite.com or http://m.yourwebsite.com.

Going this route there are other factors to consider such as detecting mobile devices and alerting search engines you have a separate mobile website:

If you do not have a web developer on hand to make your site mobile friendly reach out to freelancer sites or forums. Expect the costs to vary. The process can be as simple as adjusting a few lines of code or as involved as creating another website depending on the difficulty of your current theme layout.

In my opinion the update is always worth it resulting in a more user friendly experience which almost always increases traffic and conversions.​

 

[enlytend]

UPDATE:
Google WILL be using mobile friendliness of a site as a factor in mobile search rankings beginning April 21, 2015.

Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html

So if you get traffic from mobile search on pages that don't meet their guidelines, get crackin'.

BTW, I got a warning about a responsive site because an element on some pages wasn't 100% responsive - even though it adapts to fit MOST screens. They're really going all-in on this.

 

[Name Trader]

I just got one of those messages for a website they have banned. WTF! 100% immobile.

I would add the domain was a defensive reg. And it was banned before I acquired the domain.

 

[Beezy]

I love that google is doing this.

 

[ulterios]

Some of my sites are 100% mobile friendly and some aren't. However I only get about 7-9% of my traffic from mobile devices so I had been putting off updating the ones that aren't. Since I don't get that much traffic from mobiles I am not overly worried about it but I know it needs to get done.

 

[enlytend]

You're lucky! Most of my sites (and client sites) get a much higher percentage.

They're being really persnickity about things like "tap targets" (i.e. buttons or links) which are too close together.

And one annoyance - everything has to fit down to a 320px screen size. Everything. Let's say you have a multi-column comparison table - nothing crazy, but for example 4-5 columns. You have to make that fit on a 320 width screen without horizontal scrolling or you will "fail" the mobile friendly test. (You can bury it in a scrolling div and "pass" but seriously? On a small device I'd flip it landscape and/or expect to scroll that type of data.)

 

[ulterios]

You're lucky! Most of my sites (and client sites) get a much higher percentage.

They're being really persnickity about things like "tap targets" (i.e. buttons or links) which are too close together.

And one annoyance - everything has to fit down to a 320px screen size. Everything. Let's say you have a multi-column comparison table - nothing crazy, but for example 4-5 columns. You have to make that fit on a 320 width screen without horizontal scrolling or you will "fail" the mobile friendly test. (You can bury it in a scrolling div and "pass" but seriously? On a small device I'd flip it landscape and/or expect to scroll that type of data.)

320px!!! That's taking it a bit far. I am still trying to figure out if I am gonna make a big deal out of it and worry about being "mobile friendly" since I don't get much traffic from mobile users anyway.

I am just curious as to how much of a hit Google is going to impose. How much of a factor are they going to make it in their rankings.

 

[enlytend]

It will affect rankings in mobile search, per their announcement.

 

[hostbrink]

Future of SEO is load time, responsive theme and content .... as per my observation

 

[enlytend]

Even if you are using a responsive theme you can fail for tap target placement and size.

 

[Rojer Martin]

I also received the same warning in Google Webmaster tool for my websites which are not mobile friendly. So I have started to get a mobile friendly design for those.