Google Is About to Optimize Search Results For Mobile -- Prepare Yourself

Google is the undisputed king of Internet search, accounting for 75 percent of searches in the US and a staggering 90 percent of those in the European Union -- so dominant that the EU is set to sue Google for allegedly prioritizing search in its interests. That’s why you should pay attention when Google switches up how it ranks sites in search, which the tech titan is about to do again when it updates its algorithm on April 21: According to Search Engine Land, mobile-friendly sites are going to rise to the top when users search from mobile devices.

While the update is specific to mobile searches, they account for 30 percent of total searches on the web, enterprise platform SEO Clarity said in a presentation at SMX West in March -- and that number is steadily increasing. Last November, Google started attaching a helpful "mobile-friendly" label on certain websites during mobile searches -- but a recent Google Webmaster Central post points out that the upcoming algorithm update will also change the "mobile-friendly" tag, which will be applied on a page-by-page basis. This will lead to the algorithm prioritizing pages that are optimized for mobile over others, even within the same site. However, it won't penalize the site as a whole, Google engineer Gary Illyes said at SMX West. The algorithm update will also review a site’s mobile-friendliness in real time, so newly mobile-optimized sites should get the "mobile-friendly" tag sooner than before, Illyes said at SMX West. But the algorithm update will also throw a bone to sites that have partner apps: Users actively signed in to those apps will see pages from the partnered site ranked higher. Those partner apps must be indexed first, however.