Google Launches Mobile Friendly Test Tool & Mobile Friendly Label

Google Mobile Friendly Test Tool
  • Save

In the past 2 years, I have mentioned multiple times about the importance of having a mobile optimized version of your Website and many of you have already made a shift to the mobile optimized website.

At the same time many of you who are waiting for the right time to move to mobile friendly theme, this is the right time for you to have a mobile optimised website. Google team announced the launch of a new label in search which will show if a webpage is mobile optimised or not.

Subscribe on YouTube

Undoubtedly this will affect click-through rate by great percentage for users using mobile phones to browse internet. This is how this new label will show up infront of web-pages which are mobile optimised.:

mobile friendly in search engine
  • Save

This is not an official ranking factor yet, but it might be consider as a ranking factors in coming days. Here is a quote form official announcement page:

“We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.”

Here are some of the factors which you need to consider while making your website mobile friendly:

  • Avoid using flash or any other software which is not common on all mobile devices.
  • Text of the webpage should be readable without zooming.
  • Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom.
  • Links should be placed in a way so that they can easily be tapped and have enough space between two links.

Chances are your website is already mobile friendly and you might start seeing the “Mobile-friendly” label in mobile search engine soon for your website. Though you should also check Google webmaster tool for pages which are not mobile friendly. Here is the link to mobile usability report for your Google Webmaster tool. In my case I noticed few pages are marked as errors and I need to work on them to make it mobile friendly. Three most common types of error which I noticed here:

  • Touch elements too close
  • Flash usage
  • Content not sized to viewport

Here is a screenshot from my Google Webmaster tool:

mobile usability GWT
  • Save

If you see similar errors on your GWT dashboard, make sure you spend time to make changes to remove all the usability errors.

Use Google’s Mobile Friendly testing tool To Test Mobile Website

If you are wondering about your website being mobile optimised or not, you should use mobile friendly testing tool by Google over here. Simply add your website link at the URL field and click on Analyse to see if your website passes or fails the test. Here is what the result is for ShoutMeLoud:

mobile friendly website
  • Save

Having a mobile friendly website is not only need for the time but it’s a necessity in today’s date when mobile devices usage is increasing tremendously every day.

There are many approach you can take to make your WordPress Website/blog mobile friendly and the first one which I recommend is to use a good responsive WordPress theme. I use Thesis WordPress theme with custom skin (responsive design) and I have a mobile specific design. You can open https://www.shoutmeloud.com on your mobile phone browser to see what I’m talking about.

Another approach is to use a WordPress plugin like WP Touch or use Jetpack plugin mobile theme to offer mobile optimized view.

Google mobile friendly badge will soon be available globally and I recommend you to ensure that your website is mobile friendly by then. If not, it will affect your click-through rate and may affect your search engine ranking on mobile search engines over the time.

  • Must read: How to Rank#1 in Google search engine

Do let me know what approach you are taking to make your Website mobile friendly? Don’t forget to share about this with your friends on Google plus and Twitter.

Was this helpful?

Thanks for your feedback!
  • Save
Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

7 thoughts on “Google Launches Mobile Friendly Test Tool & Mobile Friendly Label”

  1. Ali Iqbal

    Due to massive usage of mobile internet, companies are trying reaching out to users to target their mobile optimized ads. Big big market crunch in mobile ads. Internet marketers are spending big bucks on mobile ads. And if we have optimized our web for mobile version, we can hit big mass.

  2. Ammar Zeb

    Well, I think its a really cool invention by Google and its like a reward for the site owners who have mobile and other device responsive designs and layouts for their websites. And also Google showed that it also cares for the mobile users.

    Thanks for mentioning, keep writing Harsh brother!

  3. Shahbaz Ali

    another great tool by Google. this tools usually much useful to test your website is mobile optimized or not. Nowadays your website must have mobile optimized view. So another great post by Harsh Agrawal.

  4. Deepak

    Thanks for sharing this wonderful article. Really Mobile Friendly Test Tool will be very interesting for web users.

  5. Adesoji

    Thanks for the update Harsh.

    This is a great step forward by Google. The tool will help a lot of bloggers/webmasters to pay more attention to the mobile users that visit their blogs daily.

    I checked my Google Webmaster tool dashboard and found some error. Fixing them right away.

  6. TeachMatters

    Thanks for update, Harsh. No doubt, future will be mobile friendly/centred. I am still on Blogspot…want to your help/service to migrate it on wordpress as I am facing a problem in doing so- unable to migrate blogger blog url as it is to wordpress hosting. On your suggestion, I tried my hands on Cloudways, also used Bigrock hosting pack but didn’t succeed. Waiting your response eagerly.

  7. Rahul Dubey

    Hello Harsh !

    You have shared some very useful tips to make our site mobile friendly. And you are right its the need of time as mobile devices are increasing at a very fast pace these day.

    I do agree that having a good responsive theme can make it easier to have responsiveness. However I don’t agree that this is going to play a major role in CTR and rankings. This may affect the average time spent on site and bounce rate as non-user friendliness compell readers to leave the site instantly but that doesn’t mean search bots would take these prospects in consideration while allotting SERPs.

    By the way thanks for letting us know !

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top