When MobileGeddon began rolling out in April 2015, Google started to favour the sites which were responsive or mobile optimised. Even before then, from November 2014, Google had officially started showing a ‘Mobile-friendly’ label tagged to websites which were mobile friendly. It told users and searchers that the site was optimised for use on mobiles, which improved the chances of click through on mobile devices and more importantly increased the chance of a conversion because the customer could easily add a product to their basket and progress to the optimised checkout.
In a recent announcement, Google said it will start removing the Mobile-friendly label that currently appears in search results.
This is how the Mobile-friendly label looks in current search results:
This does not mean that the algorithm is no longer active, it is just the label that is going away in a bid to ‘declutter’ the search results. In its announcement, Google said that “85% of all pages in the mobile search results” are now mobile-friendly by Google’s criteria so the label is no longer necessary.
There is no specific date or time frame for when the label will be removed, but it will be rolled out very soon, so if your site is responsive but you do not see the ‘Mobile-friendly’ label appear in the search results, there is no need to panic, it could just be that the change is being rolled out. We recommend regularly checking the mobile usability using the Google Search Console Tools.
Use Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool and/or check your mobile usability report in the Google Search Console.
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