Now mobile-friendliness is a Google ranking signal !!

xdude

New member
Yes. This one of their search algorithm happened last month. So from now on your web site is not mobile friendly then you will loose your rankings in Google search for mobile devices like smart phones and tabs. This won't effect your traffic from Desktop computers but these days more and more people use mobile devices so it will make a huge impact.

Use this tool to check your web sites mobile friendliness,

Also you can find any errors your site has from Google webmaster tools. Just Login > goto the site > Search Traffic > Mobile usability

I think it's time redo your old sites and find responsive themes for your Wordpress blogs if you still use old themes and also for forums.

I saw this in an article in Google AdSense few days back and thought to share few important facts from it.
 

Peter

Member
I'm glad they are keeping desktop and mobile devices apart. I'm not so interested in mobile devices so it will probably take a while before I bother learning all about mobile usability/responsiveness and how to apply it to my website without breaking desktop usability (which is prio 1 for me).
 

Genesis

Administrator
Staff member
Here is an explanation about the new Google algorithm. It's quite serious for business Websites as Google has been penalizing rankings of Websites that have been found not to be user-friendly since 20 April:

[video=youtube]

Here is a useful tutorial for those with old style static Websites who want to make them user-friendly with not too much trouble. Nice part is that you only need to make a few tweaks to the index page and code the CMS - the tutorial takes you step by step through the coding:

[video=youtube]
 

xdude

New member
I have started changing my all static sites to Wordpres few years back when it's clear future is for cms and responsive designs. I hate changes but I had to do it. More and more people using mobile devices to browse net so that's what new thread is, no going back.
 

smalpierre

New member
I'm getting up with the times now, building a mobile first site, also using flexbox instead of Susy 2 for layout. Susy 2 is way ahead of the game compared to other grid systems, you aren't constrained to a particular number of columns with set values, and you don't have to load up your html with classes like col-2-of-8. It mainly does grid math.

I am trying to keep my dependency chain small, and flexbox is the way of the future. It makes most everything easier, makes sticky footers and holy grail layouts pretty easy, it makes aligning horizonally and vertically very easy and intuitive, and it's built into CSS3 - so it cuts out a dependency.

The problem is that browser support is lagging a little bit, so a lot of people recommend you don't use it for layouts. My theory, is that if you can't update a browser I can't help you. Sure, I have to use browser prefixes on selectors, but I'm only worried about the -webkit prefix, and only the new style.

This means that I'm supporting ie 11+, and safari 7+. I could add the -ms selector all over the place to get partial support for ie10, but no. Sorry xp users, but you can't get support anyway since ie8 is the highest you can get. If you can get 10, you can update and get 11.

Probably the best thing I did was add this: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> to the head of my templates. This keeps mobile browsers from scaling say a 960 grid to fit the screen without horizontal scrolling.

I use the google mobile simulator in chromes dev tools, but if you're serious you have to also test on an iPad and / or an iPhone, and an Android device. Then you can use chrome to simulate different device widths. Of course it's best to test on as many platforms as you can get your hands on - and test in ie11, firefox, chrome, and maybe some others like opera.

http://caniuse.com/ has been a great help too!

There have been more than a few curveballs, but it's going alright overall ;)
 

Genesis

Administrator
Staff member
smalpierre said:
I'm getting up with the times now, building a mobile first site, also using flexbox instead of Susy 2 for layout. Susy 2 is way ahead of the game compared to other grid systems, you aren't constrained to a particular number of columns with set values, and you don't have to load up your html with classes like col-2-of-8. It mainly does grid math.

I am trying to keep my dependency chain small, and flexbox is the way of the future. It makes most everything easier, makes sticky footers and holy grail layouts pretty easy, it makes aligning horizonally and vertically very easy and intuitive, and it's built into CSS3 - so it cuts out a dependency.
Look forward to seeing it. Are you creating it on your free space?
 

smalpierre

New member
It's a site for a franchisee of a restaurant chain. There's a subdomain on my site for it, but I'm developing locally, then pushing it up there so they can see the progress.

Once the first franchisee site is done, the other 9 will be moved onto it, then corporate.
 

jaran

New member
Is there anyone getting impact after this update ?
For now, I have loss little visitor although my site support with mobile friendly. :huh:
Many people says if their site also getting deindex before this update launching on it. Im glad my site still save until now.
 

xdude

New member
This update has nothing to do with de-indexing sites. So that's the reason for those who had their sites de-index. If your site is mobile friendly then that's not probably the reason for loss of visitors. Probbly some of your pages have gone down in Google SERP.

I haven't seen any big changes. All my sites are are Wordpress and have mobile friendly themes.

You can find out all about Google updates from this page,