On April 21st 2015 Google made a big change to the way that they ranked websites on searches made from mobile devices. Google had been busy testing all the sites in their catalogue on a list of features which to their mind made a website ‘Mobile Ready’ – that is suitable for viewing on small screen devices such as smartphones and tablets. This caused such a big shakeup that the internet spawned a brand new hashtag to describe it. “#mobilegeddon”.

#Mobilegeddon

So what difference did mobilegeddon actually make? Well the answer is that it has in fact made a notable difference to the order that websites are presented in the Google search results. Big businesses who had the resources to implement new sites and site templates before the big day were least affected. But guess who it made the biggest difference to? That’s right – Small Businesses Owners.

Testing Your Site is Mobile Ready

Whilst implementing changes to your site can be daunting, the good news is if you have a reasonably modern site then you might have been one of the lucky ones who doesn’t need to make any changes yet. The easiest way to find out is by letting Google do the checking for you. As part of this big change Google have launched some great new tools to help everyone check their sites are mobile ready. All you need to do is visit this site:

https://www.google.co.uk/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

Put your website’s url into the box and hit the ‘Analyze’ button. It might take a few moments but Google will give you a nice clear yes or no at the end of it. If the answer is no then it will even recommend how to implement the changes necessary on your site to become mobile friendly. Some sites might just need to make a simple change like increase their font size, whilst others will need more broad ranging changes to the look and feel of their entire site. You can read a little bit more about the sort of things that Google will take into account in our blog post: The importance of mobile website design in 2015.

How Do I Make My Site Mobile Ready?

If you’ve got a website with us already rest assured your site is already ‘Mobile Ready’ and no further action needs to be taken in this area. If however your self-built or aged small business website is in need of some remedial action please don’t hesitate to drop us a line, or ask for advice in the comments box below.