Fix Your Mobile Site–or Face a Google Demotion
Long load times, blank screens, and customer headaches are a recipe for demotion in Google’s search rankings, warn two engineers. Here’s how to fix it.
Small business owners, beware: If your site isn’t mobile friendly or creates a headache for smartphone users, Google will punish you.
Yoshikiyo Kato, a software engineer, and Pierre Far, a Webmaster Trends Analyst, announced Tuesday Google will start demoting websites who don’t fix their problems. Google also made a jab at Adobe Flash, reminding site developers that neither iPhone nor Android–with version 4.1 or higher–host its content. Matt Cutts, head of search spam, said Google is in the process of readying a speed ranking factor for mobile.
Fortunately, Google pointed out two areas where you might be going wrong: faulty redirects–i.e., when a page redirects users to the same mobile site–and mobile-only errors, which are often blank screens.
The hope is to make the mobile web a better place, which is what Google wanted all along.
These days, mobile is where every company wants to be, with users accounting for one-fifth of all web traffic. In fact, a Google-Nielsen study found 73 percent of mobile searches “trigger follow-up actions, whether it be further research, a store visit, a phone call, a purchase or word-of-mouth sharing.”
Because 45 percent of all mobile searches are goal-oriented, having an efficient website encourages users to explore, which could result in a sale or registration.
Will you update your mobile site this weekend? Let us know in the comments.
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