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Google Clarifies Details About Its Upcoming Mobile-Friendly Algorithm | DrivingSales News

Google Clarifies Details About Its Upcoming Mobile-Friendly Algorithm

March 26, 2015 0 Comments

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There has been a lot of discussion as well as speculation about the details of Google’s mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that will be launching April 21. Many webmasters are anxious about its release, as it has been said that its impact will be significantly larger than the Panda and Penguin algorithms. Although the company has explained that the algorithm will work on a page-by-page and real-time basis, some of the specifics about how long it will take to roll out and some other details have not been entirely clear up until this time.

To help, Google answered a series of questions in a Google+ hangout, the details of which are important for webmasters and marketers to consider.

First of all, in response to the question about how long it will take to roll out, the company said the following in its Q&A video session:

“We are expecting it (the mobile friendly algorithm) to roll out on April 21. We don’t have a set time period because it is going to take a couple of days to roll out. Maybe even a week or so.”

An important question that is on the minds of many webmasters is how they can determine whether or not their page will be considered mobile-friendly by Google’s new algorithm, as well as the details of the ranking factors. The company explained that the mobile-friendly algorithm is an on or off algorithm on a page-by-page basis. In other words, pages will not be ranked by the degree to which they are mobile-friendly, but simply by whether they are mobile-friendly or not. The company then provided the following details about how to determine whether or not your page will benefit from the ranking change:

“As we mentioned in this particular change, you either have a mobile-friendly label or not. It is based on the criteria we mentioned earlier, which are small font sizes, your tap targets, your links to your buttons and readable content. But, as we mentioned earlier, there are over 200 different factors that determine ranking, so we can’t just give you a yes or no answer with this. It depends on all the other attributes your site has, whether it is providing a great user experience or not.”

Although this does provide some basic information, it becomes clear that the large number of factors makes it difficult to determine on your own whether or not your website will be considered mobile-friendly by the algorithm change.

So, how can webmasters and marketers determine this in advance of April 21?

Google explained that one method is to check the live mobile search results now to see if your pages currently have the mobile-friendly label. If they do, the mobile-friendly testing tool should also confirm this.

You can visit the following page to use Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

It’s highly advisable to test your pages now and make any necessary changes before April 21, to ensure that your website benefits from Google’s algorithm change when it is launched next month.

About the Author:

The DrivingSales News team is dedicated to breaking the relevant and the tough stories affecting car dealers. Have questions for DrivingSales News? Reach the team at news@drivingsales.com.

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