There is no question that Google Values Mobile User Experience. The Logic is there. Google spends a considerable amount of time and effort tailoring their search results to serve mobile users more effectively, and one thing is clear. Websites that provide users with a seamless mobile experience are rewarded and websites that alienate and frustrate mobile users lose visibility.
To a lot of search marketers, it came as no surprise when Google, in 2014, announced that they would start boosting the rankings of websites that provided a high quality mobile experience. Mobile Usability had become a ranking factor. Google had been downgrading websites that had mobile issues and now they were going to start rewarding those that had done their mobile webpages properly.
Mobile User Experience
Google has focused on enhancing its mobile search result snippets for user experience. Now, users can preview results instantly, and those tagged sites tagged mobile friendly can be opened directly. Edits such as these, have been made by Google to improve quality of user experience and overall search.
Shortly after this update, Google made another algo update that further advanced mobile friendly websites. Those mobile friendly websites that qualified were given an additional boost in visibility on the mobile results pages.
The Mobile Penalty
Early on, Google began implementing a mobile penalty. As early as June 2013, websites that gave a poor performance for mobile users were able to receive a form of visibility penalty. The penalty, however, was not across all devices. One site could perform well on desktop, but if the mobile version was problematic, the site could rank considerably lower in the mobile search results.
Evolution: Old Google algorithms slowly walked the line from just penalty only to a combination of penalty and reward. They were still limiting visibility of websites that offered a poor mobile usability experience. However, websites that did excel in mobile optimization were rewarded with more visibility and the identifiable mobile friendly label.
What Of The Websites That Are Positioned Between The Two Extremes?
There are a substantial number of websites that fall somewhere in the middle. Websites that are not optimized for mobile, but are still usable. Google has been clear that these websites will not be automatically demoted in their rankings just for not having the mobile friendly label. Of these websites, however, there has still been no increase in ranking for having not been optimized in the same way as the fully optimized websites.
❌ Penalized
A website that prompts mobile related errors will get penalties.
⚠️ Neutral
A website that fails to load perfectly will still be visible.
✅ Rewarded
A website that will get the mobile friendly designation will get to enjoy a competitive advantage.
Having Good Visibility in Mobile Searches
Google has put in a lot of work to figure out how people use mobile devices. Mobile usability reports were even added to Web Master Tools which is now called Search Console to assist site Managers. It is now mandatory to improve mobile user experience. It is the only way to achieve and sustain search visibility in the long run.
The GoogleBot has specific things to look for when it crawls a site. For a website to be considered truly mobile friendly, it has to meet all the criteria below:
Using Tools to Your Advantage
Google suggests checking your website for possible technical issues using Mobile Friendly PageSpeed Insights. They customer site owners as well as other third parties to aid in responsive design and help to site speed and layout.
Conclusion
Google has always taken mobile usability into consideration and so should we. Google has optimized its algorithm and so should we if we want our website to rank.
If changed the site to have a seamless mobile experience they would instantly rank higher.
