Google to penalize poor mobile performance
Mobile usage continues to rise. With 91% of U.S. adults owning mobile phones and over 60% of those being smartphones, it’s no secret that the shift to mobile search is becoming increasingly important.
In response to the shift in device usage and user demand, Google announced recently that they will begin penalizing sites performing poorly on mobile devices. This is good news for businesses who have already invested in their mobile marketing and their mobile presence because they will soon begin to see a greater visibility in search engine results as others are penalized.
Google went on to explain, “To improve the search experience for smartphone users and address their pain points, we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.”
In addition, Google published a list of common negative issues for mobile users that they will begin looking at, including:
- Site speed
- Faulty redirects
- Serving up 404s
- Slow or unresponsive pages
- Incorrectly handling Googlebot-Mobile
- Unplayable videos on smartphone devices
- Smartphone-friendly pages returning errors
Don’t leave customers behind with a non-mobile-friendly site. We recommend making your existing website responsive so users from all devices—and Googlebots—receive a fluid user experience and keep coming back.
