The sentence that has just got me thinking and prompted me to write this article is "ALL sites that are NOT mobile friendly will be rated as Fails to Meet". Sounds kind of threatening. And maybe it is for you too. Let me explain what I mean.
Google's new "instructions"
That Google creates all search results purely automatically according to algorithms is now an obsolete myth. Rather, it has been known for a few years that Google employs staff who check search results manually. Their assessments and evaluations flow (to an unknown percentage) into the overall evaluation of the quality or ranking of the websites. This can be compared to the manual entry of a website in directories such as DMOZ1.
To ensure that these employees do not only make subjective decisions, they are provided with guidelines from Google (Google Quality Rater Guidelines), which are unfortunately not publicly accessible. If they are, then they are "leaked", i.e. published by third parties without authorization.
As soon as the guidelines are public, they are analyzed in the "SEO world" and searched for ways in which this new information about Google's rating could help with their projects. SEO is, after all, a circumstantial science and so search engine optimizers are grateful for any concrete help.
EAT and mobile friendly
These and other terms appear in the guidelines for reviewers. I would like to briefly explain these two: EAT stands for "expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness" (expertise, authority and trustworthiness source) - and the lack thereof. These factors were included in the rater guidelines back in 2013. Website operators also experienced this as a Panda update2 and were sometimes penalized considerably for poor quality.
mobile view of the arocom page
You could say that "mobile friendly" refers to websites and applications, but also individual content (images, videos, etc.) that provide a good userexperience3 on a mobile device. You need to consider various weaknesses of mobile devices:
- Mobile devices have a smaller display: content cannot always be displayed in full or is scaled down so much that the viewer does not benefit from it.
- Long loading times due to slower Internet access on the move: Fiber optic technology, open WLAN or LTE are not yet available everywhere. Even and especially in large cities, smartphone users have to make do with low speeds as too many users share a single cell.
- Difficulties with usability4: Entering data, for example, is often very difficult as you can miss a key on the smaller displays. And if you make a typing error, it can be very difficult to find the mistake in the first place. An auto-complete function helps here, especially with standard input masks. The navigation is also often too small to select the right point. A better arrangement of content can greatly improve the user experience here.
- Use of unsupported technologies: This primarily refers to Flash, which is becoming increasingly unpopular on all sides. Apple's iOS has never allowed Flash for security reasons. Applications or websites with Flash are therefore not mobile friendly.
Google says (and most people will agree): A mobile device should make it easier for me to use the mobile internet, not make it harder - and especially on the move.
"Mobile friendly" has just been added to the current Google Quality Rater Guidelines from October 2015. What's more, Google has reissued its guidelines for this topic! But why is this criterion so important to Google? Two facts explain this fact: Firstly, Google wants to present its Android users with the best possible results. Secondly, the use of mobile devices has been steadily increasing in recent years, but is falling almost uniformly at desktop level. This is particularly true for search queries with a (presumed) purchase intent.
According to Searchmetrics, the global use of mobile devices almost reached a market share of 40% in August 2015. Desktop usage is now at around 55%, compared to just under 80% two years ago. The service provider also shows that between April 2015 and September 2015, the proportion of mobile-friendly pages in the top 100 rose from 76% to 90%. Again: in just 5 months!
Today's use of the mobile internet also shows that the switch to mobile friendly is worthwhile: 65% of searches for "Nike Air Force" are said to have been made from mobile devices (excluding tablets) with a monthly search volume of around 75,000. Desktop searches account for just 25%.
Google benefits from websites being mobile-friendly, as this also improves the user experience for Google users. And of course, if there is a purchase intention, sales also increase when using Google AdWords, which can be placed directly on mobile devices.
EAT + mobile friendly = Needs Met Ranking
According to TheSEMPost, the evaluators should look at mobile search results from the "Pandaperspective2": Is the page of quality? This question can be answered with the EAT approach. In conjunction with the evaluation for mobile friendly, this becomes the "Needs Met Rating" evaluation model : How helpful and satisfying is the search result for the mobile user?
Employees should use this model to evaluate a mobile search result for a mobile search query. This is because the search results on mobile devices sometimes differ significantly from those displayed on your desktop. Google divides the Needs Met Rating into 5 levels:
1. Fully Meets
Highest possible rating. This search result offers a perfect answer to the search query. For all or at least the vast majority of users, no further information would be needed to fully satisfy or help them.
For example, if you search for "100 dollars in euros" and the first result is the featured snippet5 with the current exchange rate, you would get a full met. However, Google admits that it is difficult to give a full met for many search queries, as the search queries have to be very specific. Therefore, if in doubt, the next lower rating level should be selected.
2 Highly Meets
These search results are already pretty good, but not completely satisfactory on their own. The user will probably look for other search results.
One reason for this is that the search query is not specific enough and, for example, the search intention is not clearly recognizable. Or the search word is a "homonym"6 and the context does not clearly indicate the meaning of the word.
3 Moderately Meets
Such search results are helpful for many users and are therefore generally of good quality. Shortcomings of these results would be, for example, that they are not up-to-date (enough), comprehensive (enough) or from a source that is considered (sufficiently) authoritative. This includes specialist articles that are several years old and therefore (presumably) no longer up to date.
4 Slightly Meets
They are of low quality, are obviously not up-to-date, the pages are "neglected" and unkempt and/or too general or too specific for this query. The user experience here is likely to be good for very few users.
Please note: The evaluation is always about individual pages and not your entire website! This means that an article on Wikipedia can also be of insufficient quality and will then be rated poorly. This is one of the reasons why Wikipedia is no longer listed at number 1 in the results for all search queries.
5. fails to meet
The worst rating. The thing that goes through my mind all the time. Because it is important for you that Google has written in its guidelines that ALL pages that are NOT mobile friendly should be rated directly as fail to meet.
What does that mean for you?
Do it like the 90% of the top 100 sites described above: Make your website mobile friendly. Not only will this prevent your site from being filtered out of the results, but you will also offer your growing number of mobile visitors a much better user experience. And that is worth its weight in gold.
There are several approaches to this: Firstly, you can place web pages specially tailored to mobile devices in a subdomain. This could then be called m.yourpage.com or mobile.yourpage.com. Advantage: You can create two independent websites to offer a good user experience to the maximum number of customers on mobile devices as well as desktop. The disadvantage: This also means double maintenance.
The second approach is "responsive web design", where your website "looks good" on all screen sizes. You have probably already seen sites where the arrangement of elements is optimized for the respective device. The advantage is that you only have to create content once. The disadvantage, however, is that mobile users sometimes surf the mobile web with completely different intentions than desktop users.
In any case, you should check how you can offer your visitors the best user experience and decide which approach to take. Your web agency can advise you on this.
Conclusion
- The trend continues towards mobile use of the internet
- Google will respond more and more to mobile needs
- Your website is mobile-friendly if it is displayed well on small screens, has a short loading time, does not require technology such as Flash and makes mobile use easier for the visitor instead of making it more difficult. Test your website here.
- Make sure your website, whether for desktop or mobile, offers the best possible user experience. As Gary Illyes put it: "How many visitors did I help today?" instead of "How many visitors did I have today?"
By the way: With designs from our web designers in Stuttgart, your website will be 100% mobile friendly! Give us a call!
1 DMOZ: An Open Directory Project, i.e. a free directory that is maintained manually.
2 Panda Update: Google has created a series of updates to improve the quality of search results. Under the name Panda, these include filters that penalize poor quality pages and thus lower their ranking.
3 User experience: The experience that a user has when interacting with a website, for example.
4 Usability: Ease of use. Refers to the interaction of a user with a website or application.
5 featured snippet: "Google Answer" from another source that is displayed in a type of box above the rest of the search results.
6 Homonym: Opposite of synonym. A word has several meanings, e.g. golf as the car model golf or as the Gulf Stream.
