Google Inc., is about to change the way it ranks sites, and if your website isn’t mobile friendly you may be about to lose a pile of search engine referred traffic.

Dubbed Mobilegeddon and due to launch sometime on Tuesday (April 21st,) the change will see sites that are not mobile friendly ranked down on Google’s search engine results as displayed via a search from a mobile device.

The change does not affect Google’s standard, non-mobile search engine results.

“When it comes to search on mobile devices, users should get the most relevant and timely results, no matter if the information lives on mobile-friendly web pages or apps” a post on the Google Webmaster Blog reads.

Criteria for what makes a “mobile friendly” site includes text size, the amount of space between links and whether the content fits across a mobile screen. Of note, it doesn’t mean that the site should be some sort of massively dumbed down, basic version of the site (think the “iPhone friendly sites” circa 2008) but one which practices good internet by playing nicely on a phone through CSS resizing, and other features that make it easy on the eye.

Google is trying to make it fairly easy for site owners to work out whether their sites are “mobile friendly” or not with a Mobile-Friendly Test available to all, and for users of Google Webmaster Tools (GWT…if you own a website and you’re not signed up to GWT, you should be) a Mobile Usability Report is available from the GWT panel.

Users of GWT will also be able to track any changes in their search engine results pages (SERPs) once Mobilegeddon has come into full swing.

C-C-C-Changes

On one hand there’s logic in what Google is doing in terms of usability for the end user; yes, prioritizing mobile friendly sites in mobile search results will improve the mobile browsing experience.

But in the age of bigger, brighter and shinier smartphones it could be argued that given most modern phones do not struggle with rendering “non-mobile friendly” sites, the change to search engine results is overkill, and likewise may conversely see sites excluded from results that may have actually been the best pages to be shown in the SERPs.

The one advice to site owners everywhere: if your site isn’t mobile friendly as defined by Google, you’re going to have to get it up to scratch urgently because you’re about to lose a significant amount of traffic.

photo credit: Jesus Christ claims His Throne 2 via photopin (license)