Is your website “mobile-friendly”? If your site is NOT and you care about how your site ranks in Google search results (and let’s face it, we pretty much all do!)... well… you need to get busy! As Google very clearly indicated:

Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.

Your first step needs to be to visit Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Page at:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

If the test indicates your site is not mobile-friendly, you have a range of possible options. Ideally if you are using a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, you may be able to find a “responsive” theme you can use—or at least find a plugin/module that you can use on a short-term basis.

Google provides a whole series of links from that Mobile-Friendly Test page that will help you explore your options. I also published a post on one of my sites with more info:

Google Says Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly By April 21 - Or Drop In Search Results

and I also recently recorded a podcast on the same topic:

FIR On Technology with Dan York, Episode 4 - How To Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

While some folks have been irritated by Google making this move, I’m personally pleased as we’ve been talking about the need to make websites work better on mobile devices for many years now. This move by Google is providing a very clear incentive for people to finally raise the priority on mobile websites and make them actually happen. The end result will be a much more mobile-friendly Web.

Now if only Google would start to use availability over IPv6 as a ranking signal… (hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?)