In November 2014, Google rolled out a tool that allowed website owners to test how mobile friendly their site was.
 
The tool is available here:
 
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly
 
Google had this to say at the time of the roll out:
 
“We see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience. We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.”
 

Mobile Friendly Criteria

 
The list of criteria that Google uses to determine whether a site is mobile friendly is:
 
1. Avoids use of Flash software, as this is not supported by iOS (Apple devices) and is no longer supported on the Android operating system.
 
2. Allows the user to read text on the website without having to pinch to zoom.
 
3. Automatically adjusts content on the user’s screen so that they don’t have to scroll horizontally to read everything on the page.
 
4. Allows links to be spaced at a reasonable distance apart to avoid a user accidentally clicking on the wrong link when they ‘tap’ their phone or tablet.
 

Google Confirm The Update

 
In January 2015, John Mueller from Google indicated on his scheduled Google+ hangout that the new algorithm update was not related to either Panda or Penguin.
 

How To Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

 
If you want to make your website mobile friendly, here’s the 2 possible solutions:
 
1. Build an independent mobile website and use a redirect script to automatically redirect users that are browsing from a smartphone or tablet to the mobile website.
 
2. Hire a website developer to make your website mobile responsive or if you are using a content management system like WordPress, change your theme to a responsive one.
 
Both solutions work.
 

Pros And Cons Of Each Solution

 
Option 1 will require you to host your mobile website independently of your main website. A mobile website is a stripped down version of your main website: images should be smaller to allow for fast load times and you will not get the full functionality of a full website.
 
Any changes that you make to your main website (e.g. new blog posts) will need to manually entered into the mobile website too.
 
Option 2 allows you to retain the full user experience of your main website. The other benefit is that you don’t need to duplicate your workload by uploading it to the mobile website when you create new content.
 

How To Outsource The Service

 
If you need assistance in updating your website, complete the contact form here.