Since Google's announcement, there have been a certain amount of conjecture about exactly what it means and how it affects you. These are the facts:
- Your website pages are either mobile friendly or they are not. There is no middle ground. If a page doesn’t meet all of Google’s criteria, you won't see the important "mobile friendly" tag next to your site.
- Google's update will roll out over a week starting from 21st April 2015. After that date, your website ranking will be affected.
- Google suggests that you check for yourself whether your website is mobile friendly by Googling yourself. Sites that are considered to be mobile friendly will have a grey label next to their site description. If your search listing doesn’t have this, then Google doesn’t consider your site to be mobile friendly. Google also has a Mobile Friendly Test tool that allows site owners to get a quick mobile friendliness report for their site, which will highlight which aspects Google considers to be optimised for mobile and which it doesn’t. The test ranks four key areas:
- Page avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, such as Flash.
- Page uses text that is readable without zooming.
- Page sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom,.
- Page places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped.
In addition, Google have outlined the most common design mistakes that will stop your website getting the important mobile friendly tag. They include:
- Blocked JavaScript, CSS and image files.
- Unplayable content.
- Faulty redirects.
- Mobile-only 404s.
- App download interstitials.
- Irrelevant cross-links.
- Slow mobile pages