It’s always a good plan to keep up to speed with what Google is up to these days as their changes can have a big impact on your site. Their whole mission is “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible & useful.” We can certainly thank them for that as 18 years on it’s hard to imagine a Google-less world these days. One of their key principles right from their early days has been ‘Focus on the user and all else will follow’ which is still their rationale for some of the changes they’re making today.
So, just in case you haven’t already heard, we thought it was worthwhile telling you that Google finally began rolling out a penalty that was announced in August of last year. This penalty makes web pages rank lower in Google’s mobile search results if those pages have intrusive pop-ups that have to be dismissed before someone can read the page. Time to take stock if you’re using these on your site – you might want to re-think your strategy.
Mobile First
Google also provided an update on the ‘mobile-first index’ that was announced back in November. The mobile-first index means that Google will look at your site as if it is a mobile user, rather than as a desktop user. What Google sees by doing this will be the version of your site that they base your rankings off. They have announced that it will be this year sometime, but probably not Q1 2017. They will give more information when they have a better idea of when it will go live so keep watching & we’ll keep you posted.