Google Set to Strengthen Mobile-Friendly Signals this May
Back in 2015 Google made some drastic changes to mobile ranking signals. This is looking to be the second half of the change with some specific change points that Google released in their announcements.
During their announcement, they had this to say:
Getting good, relevant answers when you search should ’t depe d o hat de i e you’re usi g. You should get the best
a swer possi le, whether you’re o a pho e, desktop or ta let. Last year, we started using mobile-friendliness as a ranking sig al o o ile sear hes. Today we’re a ou i g that egi i g i May, e’ll start rolli g out a update to o ile search results that increases the effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.
If you've already made your site mobile-friendly, you will not be impacted by this update. If you need support with your mobilefriendly site, we recommend checking out the Mobile-Friendly Test and the Webmaster Mobile Guide, both of which provide guidance on how to improve your mobile site. And remember, the intent of the search query is still a very strong signal — so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank well if it has great, relevant content.
But remember, from the Mobilegeddon of 2015 to this a ou e e t, it has ’t just ee dead spa e fro Google o the topic of mobile friendly websites.
One of which, was announced not too long ago. Google stated that they do ’t pla e fa or o e sites that use whole page
banners . Usually, these come in the form of download our app here a ers. Here’s hat they look like:
Google has mentioned that they highly prefer mobile-friendly banners like that which Amazon displays on their mobile site.
What Google said about these interstitials is this:
"Instead of full page interstitials, we recommend that webmasters use more user-friendly formats such as app install banners‌We hope that this change will make it easier for searchers to see the content of the pages they are looking for." They also mention that they do ’t like s eaky atte pts to get around the full page banner punishments. Yelp o ti ues to use this ethod as they spe ifi ally do ’t like Google position on this issue. They want to highlight their mobile app with as powerful a message as they possibly can and feel like Google may be limiting their ability to do this. And as far as the public faces of Google are concerned, employees like John Mueller say they will likely penalize websites for putting up banners like this.
We’ll keep ta s o the continued slow rollout of these changes, but in the meantime we recommend you visit this page and type in your website URL here to get it tested by Google themselves to mobile-friendliness.