Google To Expand Mobile Friendliness As A Ranking Signal

[travelin cat]

The time to make sure your site is mobile friendly is approaching!

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.

[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

[lucy24]

GA would sometimes hinder the page from loading until that HTTP connection completed.

Eeuw. Current versions of piwik live at the very bottom of your html, so they can have no effect on rendering.

I do most of my analysis with raw logs. But sometimes it's useful to look at something javascript-based so I can see, for example, if they went generically from PageA to PageB (navigation links) or straight to PageB#FragmentC (in-text link following a train of thought).

Edit since we're on a new page:

Page Speed Insights: [developers.google.com...]
Mobile-Friendly Test: [google.com...]

[keyplyr]

Current versions of piwik live at the very bottom of your html, so they can have no effect on rendering.

That's where the GA code was as well. Page content displayed, but even though the script was asynchronous, page loading was sometimes stalled until the HTML connection completed; e.g. the browser could not finish task and the user could not execute anything further.

This will always be a liability when calling remote, 3rd party connections, especially on mobile networks. My mobile-responsive site links to a social media. One of which supplies the gadget from their remote server. This is always the last component to fully load. I have a significant traffic stream from them so I justify the delay.

[Tonearm]

You can install Piwik on your own server so the call is to your own domain.

[Rlilly]

If a site is not ready by April 21 and thier Rankings bounced downwards. Is there a chance it can come back if the site is eventually made Mobile freindly?

[netmeg]

Possibly, but I don't think we're going to have an idea of how long it might take until after it happens.

[breeks]

Spend more time testing competitor sites than mine with the Google mobile friendly testing tool. And to my delight quite a few of them are "Not mobile-friendly"

Will be interesting to see if they get dinged for this.

[ken_b]

If a site is not ready by April 21 and thier Rankings bounced downwards. Is there a chance it can come back if the site is eventually made Mobile freindly?

I wonder if this other thread might hold a clue about that?
Mobile Algo April 21st: Real Time And Page By Page Basis [webmasterworld.com]


.

[micklearn]

I'm guessing more mobile traffic will be steered towards G properties/pageviews. Not a hunch, just in line with what's been happening with most of the latest "updates" they've done.

[aakk9999]

The following message was posted on twitter:

Zineb from Google at #smx Munich about the mobile ranking update: is going to have a bigger effect than penguin and panda! [twitter.com...]
Apparently, Zineb, a Google employee [twitter.com] said that at SMX Munich.

It is not clear if SERP impact Zineb is talking about will be affecting only mobile and smartphone SERPs or all SERPs. In 5 weeks we will find out!

Added
New thread discussing this is here: Google mobile algo to be bigger than Panda / Penguin as deadline looms [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: aakk9999 at 11:25 am (utc) on Mar 19, 2015]

[dethfire]

I don't see the reason for any panic. All the quality sites will have a good mobile experience by then. They should have had it long before now.

[keyplyr]

quality sites

My favorite :)