Google Confirms New Boost for Mobile Friendly Sites

Do you remember Mobile-geddon from last April? Well, get ready for part two, without all the hype. Google just released an announcement titled: 'Continuing to make the web more mobile friendly' in which they said:

Beginning in May, we'll start rolling out an update to mobile search results that increases the effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.

Yes, all web pages that have that 'mobile-friendly' label will appreciate an additional ranking boost.

However, this doesn't mean that if your site is responsive then you automatically qualify for this label. The 'mobile-friendly' label is one that you need to check to be sure each of your pages qualifies for - this is NOT a site wide label. You can check them at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

Here is a quick list of facts about this update:

• This is a page-by-page ranking signal.

• This will only affect mobile results seen on a smart phone.

• This will be rolled out internationally to all languages.

• This will be part of the algorithm so any changes you make to your site will go live as soon as your site is crawled next.

Just like Mobile-geddon was last year - this is a great hook to get clients moving forward and spending more money with you. Now is the time to get them all to switch over to a completely responsive site, if they haven't already. And for those that are responsive, it's probably time to sell them a 'mobile-friendly' website audit this month. No one wants to miss out on a promised ranking boost by Google.