
Websites Prep for Google’s ‘Mobilegeddon’ - sssaylin
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/04/20/websites-prep-for-googles-mobilegeddon/?mod=LS1
======
barrkel
This is somewhat to my annoyance, because I frequently find mobile-friendly
pages less friendly on mobile than desktop pages.

Specifically, mobile-friendly typically disables zoom, so that zooming can't
be used to choose text size or to scroll through the page at a higher rate.
Instead, everything is reduced to a kind of very long ticker-tape, where if
you're deep into the page, you need to scroll many, many times to get
anywhere.

Alternatively, you get a page broken up into expandable sections, like mobile
wikipedia, where it's very tedious to visually scan the page. Wikipedia is one
of the best examples of a site where I prefer the desktop page on mobile.

Another issue is limited functionality. Sites with complex forms typically
present a hobbled or otherwise limited, basic mobile experience.

~~~
leephillips
" mobile-friendly typically disables zoom"

That's just a stupid choice made by (so many) web developers. I checked a
sampling of my own sites with Google's tool and they all passed as mobile
friendly, but none of them disable zooming. (HN fails, of course.)

~~~
circlingthesun
I disable zoom to prevent IOS and Android from zooming in when a textbox is
focused. How else can I prevent this?

~~~
leephillips
Why do you feel you need to prevent it? As a user I'm pretty sure I'd rather
just zoom back out if I want to, or use a browser that didn't do this if it
really bothered me. But not having the option to zoom is annoying.

~~~
jianshen
As a front-end dev, I'm really curious about this. If you're using a native
mobile app, do you expect the UI to zoom in on text inputs as well? Is that a
common UI behavior?

I've always been a fan of moving mobile web towards the standards and
behaviors of native apps which generally did not require zooming to get tasks
done.

~~~
p_l
Yes, it does happen on some text inputs, it tends to depend on relative size
(for example, I recall zoom in landscape but not necessarily in portrait,
etc.).

Generally I welcome it, because I can click on the teeeny input field and have
it come "closer" to me for editing then get out of the way.

------
tpatke
Two thoughts:

First: I find it worrying that Google has enough power to dictate the
direction of the internet is such profound ways. Remember when people would
get up in arms when Microsoft created de facto standards?

Second: Doesn't this change only effect 'mobile searches' ? Reading the blog
post [1] that is how I interpret it. I think the article could make this more
clear.

[1]
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.es/2015/02/findin...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.es/2015/02/finding-
more-mobile-friendly-search.html)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
This is what happens when your search engine monopoly also has a mobile OS.

Frankly, I hate most mobile sites. For most sites I just use an app or deal
with the desktop site. On a 5" android phone, desktop browsing isn't bad. Its
a shame companies with great mobile apps but non-mobile sites will be punished
by this, yet half-assed responsive design sites will be rewarded.

I wish google would use its muscle for good once in a while. How about
lowering the rank of sites that have all those in-page pop-ups? Or refuse
content until you log in with a facebook or similar account? That's stuff real
people complain about. The mobile stuff seems to have been taken care of for
the most part and, frankly better, via Apple's approach of convincing everyone
to buy an iphone and sites having to either serve them via apps or via mobile
themes via customer demand.

Google's heavy-handed approach is pretty concerning. If users and the market
aren't dying for mobile sites, why is google unilaterally forcing them down
everyone's throats via the completely unrelated pagerank system? If sites are
of poor quality, people won't link to them, and pagerank will work as
designed. Google is just making modifications to help sell its Android
product.

Sadly, this won't lead to some mobile renaissance (we already had one and its
working fine). We're just going to get a lot of "SEO-optimized" crappy
responsive design that will be a checkmark on a list of requirements no one
really gives a shit about. Good mobile sites are hard. Get ready for the
cookie-cutter mobile half-assery that will limit content, break functionality,
etc just because everyone is chasing that precious pagerank value.

Not to mention, its not 2008 anymore. Everyone has a mobile site. Those that
don't probably just can't afford one, like very small business and other edge
cases (applications that are only used on desktops for niche needs and have no
need for mobile). Google is just pissing on those least able to move swiftly
in an ever changing technological world.

~~~
cromwellian
Google didn't create the switch to mobile, they are years late to the party.
Apple initiated the mobile smartphone revolution. Now billions of people are
coming online, many of whom never ever had a desktop with internet, especially
in developing companies.

This is a disruptive change, and it is undeniable reality. Even if Google
didn't change the mobile search ranking, eventually non-mobile ready sites
would lose traffic from frustrated users picking alternatives that are mobile
optimized. What would happen is, mobile users would say "man, Google Search
sucks, every time I search for a site, it gives these horrible, slow to load,
hard to use sites on my phone" At some point, a competitor, possibly even
Apple, would release a mobile-ranked search engine.

Maybe they'll be a button to get the desktop results even on mobile, or maybe
"Request Desktop Site" in the mobile browser will give you Google Desktop
search. But to blame Google because you're going to eventually be forced to
update your site is just laziness.

It's not Google who brought this on, it's your customers. They've changed
their access patterns, and if you want your business to thrive, to you need to
follow your customers. Sometimes that even means native apps in app stores.

I'd say this is a good wakeup call and really, Google took way too long to
seriously target the mobile Web. Chrome only recently got Add to Home Screen
and Push Notifications, two of the biggest things missing. We're now 8 years
post iPhone (2007). The fact that Search ranking is just now, almost a decade
later, targeting mobile friendly means Google was seriously lagging the usage
patterns of most of the world.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
I find it very hard to believe that people are blaming content on search
engines. If a site doesn't look right, I blame the site. I also find it hard
to justify that even if they did, that somehow Google has a responsibility to
unilaterally police the web via pagerank punishments.

~~~
URSpider94
It's not that people blame Google for the site looking crappy, but they do
blame Google if the top search results aren't useful -- and that includes the
site being unusable. Google also makes a huge amount of its revenue off of
pay-per-click display advertising, and if it's referring customers all day
long (through organic search) to sites that don't convert, then it's bad for
everyone.

This is nowhere near the first pagerank modifier based on site performance --
it's well-known that Google penalizes sites that are slow to load, because
users click away from those sites more frequently.

------
BinaryIdiot
I wonder if this means Hacker News rankings will go down (considering it's
almost impossible to read on a mobile device). That aside I think this is a
great idea; the rank changes are limited to mobile search only and provide
users with better results.

I'm only curious how they make the determination as to what site is or isn't
mobile friendly. Is this programatic (I would have to assume it is) in which
case how do they determine this? Some sites can make a good mobile site but
they do it in an assbackwards fashion (e.g. using JavaScript only for resizing
and reflowing); would those be counted? Does it require CSS device selectors
or anything similar? I feel like it has to be a combination of things but
would really like to know what.

~~~
bhauer
For what it's worth, Hacker News works just fine on Windows Phone (mobile IE).
I'd say it's one of the easier to read sites because it's ready in an instant
and not busy adding layers 10 seconds after initial render, loading myriad
JavaScript files, and injecting social media assets from third-party sites
after I've already scrolled two pages down.

~~~
mattmanser
It loads fine in android too, it's just incredibly fiddly to click the
comments link without clicking the story and you have to zoom to click the
correct one of the up/down arrows. I'm pretty sure I've dished out a fair few
down votes quite contrary to my actual intention over the last couple of
years.

------
neovive
I updated an older website last month that was built on a static 960 grid and
converted it to a responsive layout by doing the following:

* Split the framework's grid CSS from the actual website styles.

* Used media queries to conditionally load the framework's grid.css only on larger devices and load a dedicated mobile.css on smaller devices.

The mobile.css focuses on improving the mobile experience by increasing the
spacing of elements, converting display properties to "block" (where
appropriate), and hiding extraneous design elements (ideally, this should be
done on the server prior to downloading), collapse the navbar into a slidedown
"hamburger" menu, increasing font-sizes and clickable area's on links.

Google's Web Fundamentals for Multi-Device Layouts
([https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/layouts/?hl=e...](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/layouts/?hl=en))
and Mobile-Friendly Test ([https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-
friendly/](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/)) were
very helpful.

~~~
e40
I would love to hear more about how you did this: _collapse the navbar into a
slidedown "hamburger" menu_.

Can you point me to any resources for doing it? Thanks.

~~~
neovive
Sure. In the default desktop page, the navigation menu is a traditional
horizontal navbar (a styled unordered list).

* When the media query for mobile devices is triggered, the mobile.css is loaded which, among other things mentioned above, hides the navbar and overrides the previous styling in the embedded list with: .navlist li { display: block; margin: 15px 0; text-align: center;}. The new CSS changes the layout of the navlist to a centered, vertical list.

* Another div with an id of #mobilemenu (hidden by default in the desktop css) is absolutely positioned in the top right corner of the page. That div contains a small hamburger menu png icon.

* jQuery is used to capture the click event and toggle the mobile navigation menu: $("#mobilemenu").click(function () { $(".navlist").slideToggle(500); });

------
unwind
So, am I right in understanding this to mean that Google will change how they
rank sites, adding (more?) weight to a site's mobile-friendliness, even if
queried from a non-mobile machine?

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me at first, and doesn't seem to be what's
necessarily best for users.

If I search for something on my 1920x1200-pixel desktop, I don't want Google
to prioritize results that display well (and thus might contain less
information) on mobile screens.

So I guess (and hope) I'm wrong, and it's just me reading badly, or poor
reporting. :)

~~~
mankyd
It's explicity limited to mobile search:

[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-m...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-
more-mobile-friendly-search.html)

> This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide [...]

~~~
will_critchlow
True.

Though: we speculate that it may eventually come to affect all searches - as
mobile-friendliness becomes more pervasive (and hence as non-mobile-
friendliness becomes an outlier), we anticipate that they may prefer a good
mobile-friendly result to an equivalent non-mobile friendly result even on the
desktop.

The main user-centric argument for this is the increasing amount of multi-
screening (i.e. returning to the same page on multiple devices) as well as
sharing a link via email or social (where the recipient is highly-likely to
open it on mobile at least some of the time).

~~~
what_ever
Yup CTR on mobile would help the domain overall.

------
mrfusion
I'd love to just permanently change my user agent on the iPhone so I don't
have to deal with stuff like this.

The iPhone was designed to read full sized sites and I think it works great. I
hate mobile sites.

~~~
McGlockenshire
Changing your user agent won't do a darned thing.

Modern mobile-friendly designs use CSS media queries to change styling based
on screen dimensions.

------
mark_l_watson
That makes sense to me. Sites really should be designed to look good on mobile
then adjust them so they also look good and function well (often with
additional, lower priority content) on larger displays.

For a few years I have used Bootstrap as a starting point, and as a refresher
I am taking the edX Bootstrap class right now. The course emphasises a mobile
first approach. In addition to making web dev easier I also really like
Bootstrap because it is so common that users instantly know how to navigate
and use a site. A nice way to show content.

------
INTPnerd
I still hate websites tailored for mobile devices. I can't believe Google is
encouraging companies to do this and penalizing those that do not. Almost
every single website that I go to that I notice is different on mobile is
different is ways that frustrate me to no end. Off the top of my head I can't
think of a single website where I prefer the mobile version on a mobile device
over the full version on a mobile device. I'm not saying they don't exist,
just that they are extremely rare.

------
brokentone
The tooling provided by Google is extremely frustrating to use -- as a
developer on a large content site where we are taking this seriously. I can't
believe that they will simply apply your "pagespeed insights" score to your
search ranking, they must have much more nuanced scoring mechanisms.

For example, their crawler seems to not understand picture elements at all,
and they're penalizing us (6 points) for offering retina options at all
(saying that we need to resize the images).

------
adventured
I've been looking for information on how Google is determining mobile
friendliness.

That is, are they viewing your site with a mobile agent (that reveals itself
as being on mobile), or are they using their present setup and judging your
site by its characteristics such as font size (etc)?

The reason I'm curious, is that a lot of sites do on the fly adjustments for
mobile based on the client signature. Others prefer to use the forward to
mobile m.whatever.com approach. I almost have to assume Google is smart enough
to take all of this into account and to spider sites via a bot made just for
mobile.

~~~
mankyd
[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-
friendly/](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/)

[https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-
sites/refere...](https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-
sites/references/googlebot)

------
rndn
I have a huge aversion to mobile sites. It's like consuming the Internet
through a straw. I want to be able to zoom out and see the overall structure
of the page with a pinch of my fingers! My eyes and screens have retina
resolution, so I don't mind small fonts. The worst is when you have to scroll
all the way down to find the link to the desktop version, or when the site
depends on the device-width in the viewport meta tag so that the "request
desktop version" function has no effect on iOS. Sigh.

------
Udik
What I don't get is this. Isn't Google supposed to rank websites based on the
predicted relevance of the result for the user's query? And what would the (
_supposed_ , as it is clear from many comments) mobile friendliness have to do
with this?

Would a website that contains less reliable information, or more confused
content, or that is less popular among the users themselves, be ranked higher
than a better one just because it scales down nicely on a small screen?

~~~
davidcgl
Google ranks websites using hundred of signals with different weights. I bet a
more relevant website is always going to trump less relevant ones, regardless
of how mobile friendly they are.

~~~
Udik
But if a more relevant website is always going to trump a less relevant one
(where for relevant I mean: contains the answer to the question the user has
submitted) - then what is the effect of bumping mobile friendly websites?
None, it would seem - unless there were two websites perfectly identical in
every respect _except_ for mobile friendliness, a case that must be pretty
rare.

~~~
davidcgl
If A and B are identical in all aspects except for mobile-friendliness (A >
B), _most users_ are going to like A better than B, given that information is
laid out in a more easily consumable format on mobile [1].

User satisfaction not only depends on getting a relevant answer, but also how
an answer is presented. Their degree of importance is where the weights come
in.

[1] Otherwise, why would anyone build mobile-friendly websites in the first
place?

------
liotier
"Modern" "mobile-first" web design boils down to "Powerpoint in a browser".

While there are of course relevant use cases, I have a hard time considering
them primary... But as usual I'm afraid I am not the target audience...

~~~
TeMPOraL
Entire "modern" web design, whether mobile or not, starts to look like a
"PowerPoint in a browser" \- with expected lack of any essence. The web is
ruled by marketers now. But, like you, I'm probably also not the target
audience...

------
hyperion2010
Anyone else bothered by the fact that the format is being placed above the
content? If I were cynical I would say that google has given up on trying to
find good content and have retreated to optimizing over things they can
measure. Sure, if there are two identical data sources then give me the pretty
one, but if some horribly ugly website has exactly the knowledge I'm looking
for it had bettered show up first.

------
jasonsync
In order to appease Google's new mobile friendly algorithm, business owners
and web designers have been rushing to "convert" their websites as quickly and
cheaply as possible, without thinking about the usability factors required to
make a website truly mobile friendly.

\- You get mobile websites that serve massive graphics that take forever to
load on mobile.

\- You get mobile E-commerce websites with usability disasters during
checkout.

\- You get responsive websites with key visuals scaled down to minuscule
promotions

\- You get websites with less information and content available on entry

\- You get to play hide and seek with hamburger navigation

\- You get hosting companies offering free utilities and low cost services to
convert website to mobile "point and click"

\- You get websites where the full version is still more friendly.

Sure, a high quality mobile website can be a great way to improve key
performance metrics. Businesses typically see increased conversation rates,
decreased bounce rates etc. with their mobile users.

But only when the mobile website is done "right".

With businesses rushing to get this done ASAP there's a good chance it's not
being done right - even if they still get that shiny green checkmark from
Google.

And if the "full website" is performing just fine with mobile users, what's
the rush to offer a separate version?

Google said so I suppose. Even it means a less friendly website.

~~~
davidcgl

      - You get mobile E-commerce websites with usability disasters during checkout.
    

To be fair, I think going through desktop-version checkout process on mobile
is very much worse. If an _e-commerce_ company can't get its checkout process
right, then it deserves to lose customers.

~~~
comex
At least when I use the desktop site I am confident that all of the site's
functionality is available, and that the interface is _probably_ not just
broken and unusable due to bugs, which is surprisingly common on mobile
websites. I guess people don't test mobile websites as much, and the increased
dynamicity of mobile layouts and diversity of behavior among mobile browsers
increases the probability of bugs...

------
cozuya
Is this the death of m dot sites and associated redirects?

~~~
mankyd
Nope, though I'm sure many would love that, and many more would benefit.

The provided Mobile Friendly Test does not penalize redirects, currently:
[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-
friendly/](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/)

------
alexvr
Kinda lame and not in line with what made PageRank so successful. Google
should "not be evil" and have the decency to be as neutral as possible,
allowing legitimate clicks and backlinks to judge the relevance of a website.
If people can't stand websites that aren't tailored to mobile devices, they
will simply leave and find another. I personally don't mind viewing a 20-year-
old website through a little mobile browser if the content is satisfactory.

If they are to change anything in this area, they should simply put a little
distinguishing checkmark by a mobile-friendly search result, but leave the
rankings unchanged. And this should obviously be the case only when a user is
on a mobile device.

~~~
magicalist
> _If people can 't stand websites that aren't tailored to mobile devices,
> they will simply leave and find another_

Yes, and the fifth time in a row I have to do that I stop thinking "these are
shitty websites" and start thinking "this is a shitty search engine".

Search engines are inherently not neutral. Why should a spammy site, filled
with ads and ripped-off content from different sites, not score higher if it
has higher PageRank? Because, again, that's not what you as a user wants.
That's far more important for what a "good search engine" is than some idea of
neutrality based entirely on how many other sites link to a page.

Note that there absolutely be a balance here, but that seems to be exactly
what is going on. This is just one more weight on the ranking, same as their
earlier adjustment for site load speed.

------
pbreit
In some ways this makes perfect sense. Instead of saying it's penalizing un-
mobile-friendly sites, you could say it's referencing mobile-friendly.

But, paradoxically, so many "mobile-friendly" sites are so much worse than
their non-mobile selves.

------
tlogan
I found that when using my iPhone 6S I really do not want to browse "mobile
friendly" websites. I actually prefer websites which do not have that.

For example, Google News is 10x better if it is not mobile friendly: I can see
overview, with pics, etc.

Am I the only one?

~~~
pyre
Just depends on the site. Some mobile sites just remove all functionality. For
example, the "mobile" version of a dealership site I tried to go to a couple
of years ago didn't have _any_ contact information on it. I had to access the
desktop version of the site to find out how to contact them.

------
dbg31415
And a million pointless SEO guys just got erections.

Every small business in America is about to get billed.

------
explosion
What would make more sense than blindly prioritizing mobile sites is this:

1) Desktop-friendly websites appear higher in the rankings for searches made
from desktop computers

2) Mobile-friendly websites appear higher in the rankings for searches made
from mobile devices

~~~
teraflop
That's what they're doing:
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/04/faqs-
apri...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/04/faqs-april-21st-
mobile-friendly.html)

~~~
explosion
I see, thanks. Makes sense.

To be fair, it was misleading that the WSJ article said "Google is changing
its search algorithm Tuesday to favor sites that look good on smartphones."

------
bhartzer
I've been watching sites' traffic and mobile Google search rankings (just
finished looking at over 100 site's Google Analtyics) and am not seeing ANY
changes. Looks like it hasn't been rolled out yet, even though Google said it
was going to be April 21st.

Confirmed with Gary Illyes from Google, it's actually starting to roll out
today and could be weeks...

------
tootie
There's a been a lot of geddons recently.

~~~
tkfx
I've been looking for this comment :)

~~~
tootie
HN doesn't usually tolerate top-level joke comments, but I figured this would
pass muster.

------
sparkzilla
The announcement should have been made quietly and incrementally over time.
Many small businesses do not like being dictated to by large ones (even if it
may be in their interest).

------
crxgames
This should play out in an interesting way. There's a lot of niche ecommerce
opportunities that are about to open up if this turns out to be as bad as
penguin...

------
batrat
All pages are mobile friendly, and 90% of mobile user all they do is facebook
and instagram...

------
greedoshotlast
Go Mobile or Go Home

------
mslate
Meh, they said the same thing about pagespeed and it was meaningless.

It's against Google's nature to purposefully diminish their search results'
relevance, ergo $$$ and engagement.

