Major changes to Google NZ search results on mobile platforms

As of April 21st Google will begin to rank mobile search results, on the mobile-friendliness of your website. This means that if your website hasn’t been built to be mobile friendly, it may not rank well in mobile search results, and this could be a major problem for your business. This means all that money you may have spent on website design and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) may have been in vain if most of your visitors are mobile based.

So what does this actually mean? Apparently this change will only apply to Google search results on mobile devices. This would include Google searches from mobile phones, for example Apple iPhones, Android and Windows phones.  Up to 40% of visits  to NZ websites, are now made using a mobile phone, and most will look up the website via Google instead of typing in the website address, so this change is quite a big deal. If your website is not currently mobile friendly, this change does not mean that your website will not be listed in Google search results. It only means that those other websites that would normally appear in the same search results as your website, which are also mobile friendly, will get a boost and may jump ahead of yours in the rankings.

These changes apparently will not effect Google NZ’s search results made from tablets and desktop computer browsers. It will also only affect internet searches made through the Google search engine, and not other search engines such as Bing. But as the vast majority of people use Google as their search engine of choice, Google is the market leader, so it is very important your website ranks well in Google. Other search engines will likely to copy this move by Google in the near future, so that search results are more relevant to the device the search request is being being made from.

Since 2012, the Lounge Networks website, and the majority of websites we have designed have been designed to be mobile friendly. We use Responsive Web Design to make our websites mobile friendly, which is considered to be the best method of creating a mobile website. Responsive web design in simple terms means that the website template automatically adjusts to the screen size it is viewed on. The old school way of setting up mobile websites, was to have two different websites, a mobile version and a desktop version. The problem with this is that you had to manage two different websites, two different loads of content, and two different templates, which resulted in a lot of additional work. Responsive websites have just a single website and template, but it is ‘Responsive’ to the screen size the website is being viewed on.

This change is something all website owners should be aware of. If you are interested in getting your website Mobile friendly, please email us. We have got some very economical solutions for resetting up your new website to be mobile friendly. Please also visit our Web Design website, www.designlounge.co.nz for more info.

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