Since 21st April, 2015 Google has placed considerably more emphasis on mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. The change affects all mobile searches globally, irrespective of the language used, and it is having a significant impact on search results. It is becoming much easier for cell phone, tablet etc. users to receive high quality search results that are optimized for their device.

The change is designed to eliminate situations where users looking at search results on their mobile ‘phone are presented with pages where the text is too small, links are tiny and/or too close together (making it difficult to select a particular link) or you have to keep scrolling sideways to see all of the content of a page. These situations are all too common when a website is not mobile-friendly.

Website pages are considered mobile-friendly by Google if they meet the following criteria:

1. They avoid the use of software such as Flash which is not commonly used for mobile devices.

2. The text on the pages can be read without having to zoom.

3. The content of pages is sized to fit the mobile screen without the need for horizontal scrolling or zooming.

4. There is sufficient distance between links to allow the desired link to be easily tapped without accidentally hitting a different link.

You can check if your site is mobile-friendly by using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool here.

All of the sites that we have developed since late 2014 have been designed to be mobile-friendly. However, if your site was created by ourselves earlier than that, it may not meet Google’s new requirements. Websites that do not meet the new requirements can expect to be drastically downgraded in Google’s rankings and suffer as a result.

If your website is not mobile friendly, we can make it so for you, irrespective of whether your site was originally created by ourselves or by others. Contact us for further information.