Google Recommends Responsive Design For Smartphones

[engine]

Google has now stated that. where possible, webmasters should be creating sites for responsive design.

Google Recommends Responsive Design For Smartphones [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ch]

we’d like to give you Google’s recommendations for building smartphone-optimized websites and explain how to do so in a way that gives both your desktop- and smartphone-optimized sites the best chance of performing well in Google’s search results.

Recommendations for smartphone-optimized sites

The full details of our recommendation can be found in our new help site, which we now summarize.

When building a website that targets smartphones, Google supports three different configurations:

Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device. This is Google’s recommended configuration.

Sites that dynamically serve all devices on the same set of URLs, but each URL serves different HTML (and CSS) depending on whether the user agent is a desktop or a mobile device.

Sites that have a separate mobile and desktop sites.

Earlier discussion
Shouldn't We All Be Developing Sites For Responsive Design [webmasterworld.com]

[nomis5]

They also recommend separate sites for a mobile version and a desktop version.

I'm enhancing my main site now for mobiles, and what stikes me is that 'mom and pop' sites are going to disappear in the next couple of years. They simply won't have the savvy to cope with the requirements of mobiles accessing their sites.

This whole mobile access issue is truly massive - my main site now has 35% access from mobiles, in two years time desktops will be in the minority. And this will be even more significant because those still using desktops will likely be those at work, geeks like me developing websites and grannies / grandads who have never clicked on an ad in their life.

Even some major sites have no mobile version. I do seriously wonder if google are not already penalising sites that have no mobile functionality. From the G perspective, when they look at their mobile SERPS, they must see so many sites with miniscule type that is totally unreadable. That's not good for G, they want to serve up mobile SERPS with mobile optimised sites.

This push by G for smartphone optimised sites appears to be solidly aimed at allowing G to identify mobile optimised sites. The next step will be to banish non-conforming sites from the mobile SERPS. And when that happens many sites income will evaporate within a matter of months.

Have a nice day!

[netmeg]

It still depends on the site and the niche.

My events sites are at 45% mobile this year; something like a 233% increase over last year.

Whereas my clients, most of whom are B2B, have seen an increase, but it's still very slight, and mostly only tablets so far.

We're keeping an eye out though.