From April 21, Google will favour pages that pass its mobile-friendly test when people search on phones. Searches on computers are not affected. Test your important pages now; eight weeks is enough to fix most.

What Google announced

Yesterday, Thursday, Google said that from April 21 it will treat mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal when people search on phones, in every language and every country.

A page that works well on a phone will have an advantage in phone results over a page that does not. Google said it expects the change to have a significant effect.

Searches made on computers are not affected. Neither is the website itself: nothing about the change stops a page loading or working.

Google also said it is beginning to use content from apps as a ranking signal for signed-in users who have the app installed. That part matters only if your business has its own app.

What the change covers

The assessment is made page by page, not for the site as a whole. A site with a mobile-friendly home page and an old price page that fails will be treated differently on each.

It is one signal among many. A page that answers a search far better than anything else should still appear, but where pages are otherwise close, the one that works on a phone has the edge.

Google pointed site owners to the same checks behind the "Mobile-friendly" label it has shown beside pages in phone results since November. Pages that already carry the label are in good shape.

Pages to test first

The fourth is the one to start from. Analytics can show the landing pages for visits from phones, and those are the pages where a change in phone rankings would be felt first.

How to test

Google's Mobile-Friendly Test takes one page address at a time and says whether the page passes. If it fails, it gives the reasons: text too small, links too close together, content wider than the screen.

In Webmaster Tools, the Mobile Usability report lists problem pages across the whole site, if the site is verified there. It is the quicker way to see whether the problem is one template or every page.

A page can also fail because Google is blocked from the files that style it. If the test shows a plain, unstyled version of your page, ask whoever runs the site to check the robots.txt file.

What eight weeks is enough for

Small fixes take days: a missing viewport setting, the line that tells a phone how wide to draw the page, or text and buttons enlarged in a theme that is nearly there already.

Moving a small WordPress site to a well-built responsive theme, one that rearranges itself for any screen, usually takes a few weeks, including testing.

A full redesign of a large site may not be finished by April 21. In that case, fix the pages that matter most to phone visitors first and plan the rest.

April 21 is when the change begins, not a deadline after which nothing counts. Google has not said how quickly a later fix registers, but a page fixed afterwards should count once it is crawled again.

Quick fixes and lasting ones

Plugins and add-on services that serve phones a generic mobile version can make pages pass in an afternoon. They often strip the branding, hide pages and break forms.

A separate mobile site, on its own address, can pass as well, but only if every desktop page sends phones to its matching mobile page rather than to the mobile home page.

Responsive design, one site that adapts to every screen, is the lasting answer and the one Google recommends. If a redesign was coming in the next year anyway, this is the reason to bring it forward.

A worked example

A student housing company manages furnished rooms in eight older houses near a college, with shared kitchens and leases that run by the term.

Nearly every enquiry starts on a phone. Students search for rooms near the campus between classes, and parents follow up from home.

When the mobile-friendly label appeared in phone results in November, the manager searched for rooms near the college and saw it beside two competitors' sites and not beside her own.

Her site, built in 2010, had a fixed width designed for a desktop screen. On a phone the room list was a table running off the side, and the application form needed pinching and zooming.

Over the winter it was rebuilt as a responsive site, with the vacancies page and the application form done first. The room table became a list of rooms, one under another, each with its photo and price.

Yesterday's announcement cost the company ten minutes. The manager ran each page through the test again, and every one passed.

What not to do

Do not remove content to make a page fit. Pages that hide text or images on phones still have to answer the search, and stripped pages tend to answer it worse.

Do not block Google from your style sheets or scripts to speed things up. The test needs them to see the page as a phone does.

And do not decide how much to rebuild before you know what fails. The test is free, and the answer may be one setting in the theme, or it may be the whole layout.

The counter-case

Some businesses will feel this less. A supplier whose customers search from office computers, or a business found almost entirely by people typing its name, has less riding on phone rankings.

A page that ranks for your own business name is likely to stay near the top for that search, because nothing else answers it as well.

Even so, phone visitors who reach a page they cannot use leave, ranking or no ranking. Test every important page now, and fix the ones that fail before April 21 if you can.

Before April 21

  1. Put your home page through the Mobile-Friendly Test.
  2. List the pages phones land on most.
  3. Test each one and note the reasons.
  4. Check Mobile Usability in Webmaster Tools.
  5. Book the work this week, with a date.
  6. Fix the most visited pages first.
  7. Retest every page after each change.

Step five is the one that decides whether eight weeks is enough. Developers will be busy between now and April, and work booked in early March is far more likely to be live in time than work booked in mid-April.

Why a bolt-on mobile theme is a stopgap rather than a fix is covered in a mobile plugin bolted onto an old site.

Frequently asked questions

What did Google announce yesterday?

That from April 21 mobile-friendliness becomes a ranking signal for searches made on phones, worldwide, assessed page by page. Searches on computers are not affected.

Does this affect rankings on computers?

No. The change applies only to searches made on phones. A page's position in results on computers does not depend on whether it works on a phone.

How do I know if a page passes?

Run it through Google's Mobile-Friendly Test, which gives reasons for any failure, and check the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools for problems across the whole site.

Is the whole site judged together?

No. Each page is assessed separately, so a site can have pages that pass and pages that fail. Test every important page, not only the home page.

What if I miss April 21?

April 21 is when the change begins. Google has not said how quickly later fixes register, but a page fixed afterwards should count once Google crawls it again.

Is a mobile plugin good enough?

It can make pages pass quickly, but often strips branding, hides pages and breaks forms. Responsive design, one site that adapts to every screen, is the lasting answer.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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