Google’s Algo Tweak: Bad Mobile Website Can Hurt Rankings
Google has just very recently launched a new algorithm update to target spam queries such as ‘payday loans’. Along with the recent tweak, Google has given a ‘heads up’ that a bad mobile website would affect rankings as well. This is currently broadly explained as such, “we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.”
From Google’s webmaster blog post, we learn how to optimize for the update:
1. Ensure that the same URL that shows content for desktop users do not show an error page on smartphones.
2. Ensure that when a desktop page redirects user to the smartphone-optimized website, it’s to a relevant page. In other words, blanket redirect to your mobile homepage should now be avoided.
Google’s advices to configure websites to both display and work well on mobile devices: “Try to test your site on as many different mobile devices and operating systems, or their emulators, as possible.” With this latest piece of news, it’s without doubt that Google’s saying it likes responsive web designs as oppose to a mobile version that runs on a subdomain or dynamic serving of content.
Then again, most websites are seeing increased mobile-base traffic, up to 50% for many websites. So it’s probably a good time to re-visit mobile search strategies. Trends are suggesting that it’s only a matter of time before mobile search volume catches up.
