“Mobile-Friendly” Labels In Mobile Search Results Officially Launched by Google

After lots and lots of testing, Google has just officially launched the mobile-friendly label in the mobile search results.

What does this mean? Well in an effort to help mobile users have a better experience on their devices. Google has rolled out a way to know which sites are mobile-friendly versus which ones are not, Google has added a text label under the URL in the snippet that reads “Mobile-friendly” as the first part of the search result’s snippet.

Google’s Staff has said it can be a “frustrating experience for our mobile searchers” to end up on a web page that is not mobile-friendly, thus they are adding the label to their mobile search results to communicate this to the searcher.

In addition to the mobile-friendly label, Google is experimenting with a new ranking algorithm for mobile friendly web sites.

Here is what the mobile-friendly label is officially launching with, note, it may change in the future:

mobile-friendly As you can see in the search results it is rather easy to see. These tags appear if you use the Google App as well as in a mobile browser search that returns Google results.

How do you qualify to show this label for your web site? Google said it depends on if GoogleBot detects the following criteria:

  • 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

You may be asking yourself, “How does Google know what a user experience will be like on your mobile site?” Well, Google has been dropping hints that they understand mobile experience for some time now. They recently launched mobile usability reports to help webmasters find issues with their mobile web sites.

Google also recommends you test your site in the new Mobile-Friendly Test tool, review their mobile friendly guidelines and use various third-party tools to go mobile-friendly with your web site.

This new mobile-friendly label is now rolling out over the next few weeks.

If you do not have a mobile friendly site, we can help. Click here to see what options we have.

Source: MarlinCS Blog