Starting April 21, 2015, Google is going to rigorously check whether a website is mobile-friendly or not. This factor will be built into their ranking algorithms as a signal and will affect the rankings of websites in all languages.

Searches that are done through mobile devices presently account for over 50% of Google’s total search volumes. Hence, Google wants to direct these users to mobile-friendly websites that give them a seamless browsing experience.

Why This Update Matters

The websites that adapt themselves to the screen size of any type of device, whether computer or mobile, can expect a reward from Google with a boost in the organic search rankings. The others, where users have to constantly zoom in and out to read what’s written, can expect to get penalized with a ranking drop by Google. While the quantum of the ranking boost remains to be seen, the ranking drop is expected to be significant.

More About This Update

As per Google, the impact of this update, nicknamed Mobilegeddon by the digital marketing community, is going to be more than the two major updates “Panda” and “Penguin” that Google rolled out Earlier. It is feared that millions of websites will see a significant ranking drop, which might take a long time and effort to recover.

Webmasters of millions of “not so mobile friendly” websites have an uphill task in hand to make their site compliant by April 21, 2015. Update your websites, or risk losing your website rankings in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages.

Test Your Site For Mobile Friendliness

The mobile-friendliness of your website can be instantly checked using the Google Mobile-Friendly Test available in the Google Webmaster Tools account. Talk to your web developer or site manager to check this today!

Contact us if you want to know more about how your website can become compliant with these new guidelines.