Following today’s mobile-friendly algorithm change, Google notes that the update won’t necessarily push sites that aren’t optimized for mobile down to the bottom of the rankings.
The search juggernaut evaluates websites based on 200 criteria, mobile-friendliness only being one of them. “Non-mobile-friendly sites may still rank high if they hold great content the user wants,” according to a post on Google’s Inside Search blog.
However, while having a mobile-friendly site isn’t mandatory to rank on Google, it can only help. Per the company’s internal research, nearly three-quarters of users prefer – and are more likely to return to – mobile-friendly sites.
Google urges advertisers to avoid problems like small text, too-big pages that require horizontal scrolling, and links that are too close together to be easily clickable. It also introduced a mobile-friendly badge to its search results in November. Additionally, Google has provided resources for webmasters, such as the Mobile-Friendly Test and a tutorial on its website.
Since announcing the algorithm in February, Google has seen a 4.7 percent increase in mobile-friendliness.