We were meditating some days back in the Monastery with some new web development mantras to look forward in 2015, and suddenly one of our Monks approached and passed the news “Google is back again – This time it’s the mobile friendly algorithm.”

We were sure – This was going to be interesting update and a herculean task for many websites. While checking out in detail about the new mobile friendly algorithm and how it would actually impact non-responsive websites, we made some interesting observations.

Let’s first understand, RWD

Responsive web design (RWD) is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones.)

Before RWD,

Back in 2011 when mobile browsing was picking up across the world, companies started developing a separate mobile URL m.google.com for an instance and two different sites were served dynamically depending upon the device audience uses to view the website.

After RWD,

With an advance in the technology and RWD, 2012 and onwards companies started providing on the go viewing experience with one URL and single site serving entire audience irrespective of the device from which the site is viewed. The main fun was best viewing experience without the message getting contorted.

So, what about the mobile friendly update?

• Google’s mobile ranking algorithm will officially include mobile-friendly usability factors and app indexing. Making sure your site is mobile-friendly is now more important than ever.
• Not only this, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.
• This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.
• More than penalty the update focuses on a ranking boost.
• After the update, sites which will turn Responsive or mobile friendly will again benefit quickly in terms of the rankings unlike Penguin or Panda updates.
• You could check about your page’s status if its mobile friendly using mobile-friendly testing tool of Google (Note – mobile friendly pages will be labeled mobile friendly)
• It will begin to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed.

According to a recent survey by Akamai 81% of websites are actually non-responsive. This was it! I felt it’s a clarion call for businesses to develop Responsive websites. A lot of people have already talked about the new algorithm, so we will only talk about the algorithm.

This infographic from Uplers basically covers some interesting stats about why providing a superior on the go experience in imperative in the new age marketing followed by Akamai survey results, in-depth analysis of the new algorithm, ways to safeguard your WordPress sites and so much more.