Have you ever been browsing the Web on a mobile device, only to find out the site you’re visiting has a terrible layout on your phone.  Often these sites have not been optimised for mobile devices such as phones and tablets, leaving the user struggling to read the content of the site without zooming in and moving the website around in the device window!  Google are now making our lives a bit easier by highlighting sites that have been optimized for mobile devices in its search results.

mobile friendly 730x292 Google now highlights mobile friendly websites in search results

Of course, with so many different ideas about web design, it can be difficult defining what’s truly mobile friendly. For Google, the site criteria are as follows:

  • Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
  • Uses text that is readable without zooming
  • Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
  • Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped

 

The company says it is also experimenting with using mobile-friendliness as a criteria for its search rankings. This could mean moving sites optimized for mobile devices higher up search results when browsing a mobile device, but no such change has been specified so far.

The new mobile-friendly tag will roll out to search results globally over the coming weeks.

I am delighted to report that all of the responsive sites that Freshlinx have built for clients have already been highlighted as mobile-friendly in search results on mobile devices!

Read more: Helping users find mobile-friendly pages [Google Webmaster Central Blog]