WHY IS GOOGLE MAKING THE CHANGE?

Love Google, or hate it, you have to admit its messages are consistent. Cynical thoughts about advertising revenue aside, the search engine giant repeatedly states that it wants users to have a fantastic online experience. It expects — or perhaps demands — that Web users should be able to easily find relevant, useful content, in response to a clearly defined search term.
The impending update to Google’s algorithm places greater emphasis on users navigating easily on a mobile device. Why? Because Internet use from mobile devices has been rising sharply year on year.
A cynical person might suggest that Google’s commitment to the mobile web is largely due to the relative success of its Android program compared to its Chromium program, but that would be a cynical person.
Last month, at the SMX West conference in California, chief architect of SEO Clairity, Mitul Gandhi, demonstrated that 30% of organic traffic originates from mobile devices — and that data is valid across a range of industries. Those stats could even be on the conservative side; there’s a raft of data out there showing that the percentage of traffic from mobile devices is, in some cases, as high as 70%.
We know that the mobile web is growing, if not exponentially, then certainly rapidly. In light of that fact, Google’s decision seems fair and rational.

WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

Taking Google at its word, any website that is deemed by their definition to not meet responsive standards will plummet in their rankings. And because a specific date has been provided, could the change happen overnight? Scarily the answer seems to be “yes”.
So, although a non-responsive website could still appear to be useful to a human being after April 21st, Googlebot will be unimpressed.
Does this mean that you have to make your website responsive? No, you don’t; and Google doesn’t have to rank you. Google is not the Internet, but let’s face it, failing to rank well on Google — and therefore every other search engine out there — is not a great way to ingratiate yourself with clients, or to run a successful website.
There are some obvious new restrictions, and some that aren’t so obvious: you cannot, for example, use software that isn’t commonly found on mobile devices, such as Adobe Flash; you cannot display text that can’t be read without being zoomed; you cannot force users to scroll horizontally; you need to ensure there’s adequate space between links.
There are other consequences that are harder to predict: for example, a lot of advertisers still use the SWF format, will hosting SWF-based adverts on your site damage your rankings? We’ll have to wait for the coming weeks to find out.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

The good news is, finding out whether to meet Google’s definition of mobile-friendly is easy.
Anticipating the uproar, Google have provided a useful tool that will check the responsiveness of your website in seconds. Just enter the URL of the site you wish to check into Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool and cross your fingers.
If the site is responsive, Google gives you the thumbs up. If not it will tell you why not. You’ll also get some extra detail about how Googlebot sees your pages; the only sugar-coating comes as Google offers you a series of links explaining how to solve the problems specific to your website.

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