Google today declare two updates to mobile search results: an esthetic one rolling out now and an algorithmic one coming next year. The past consists of removing the “mobile-friendly” label in google search results and the latter will penalize mobile sites that use interstitials. The motive is to “make finding content easier for users,” though as always, they didn’t give percentage exactly how much of an impact users and webmasters can expect.
Here is a screen shot of the non mobile-friendly label showing up as of this morning:
Here is screen shot looked like last week with the mobile-friendly label:
In November 2014, Google started labeling sites as “mobile-friendly” to indicate which web pages are optimized for phones. In February 2015, Google declare plans to roll out mobile ranking changes in April 2015, and then in March 2016, it promised to provides ranking “mobile-friendly webpage” seven higher in May 2016.
The Rank Ranger seo tool shows a significant drop in the mobile-friendly label from showing in the google search results,
Take heart in know about that the mobile friendly label removal doesn’t mean that mobile friendly ranking signal isn’t being used. It’s still in full use, even without the labels. The label was removed because Google wanted to uncluttered the mobile search results and because “85% of all pages in the mobile search results” now are mobile-friendly by Google’s criteria.
A website is considered “mobile-friendly sites” if it meets the following criteria, as detected in real time by Googlebot:
· Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
· Uses content text that is readable without zooming
· Sizes of content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
· Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped
interstitials that Google deems OK include legal obligations (cookie usage or for age verification), login dialogs on sites where content is not publicly index able, and banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space and are easily dismissible.
Royce Roy
15-Mar-2017