University at Buffalo (UB)
Transforming UB’s digital communications.
Published April 1, 2015 This content is archived.
Google is changing its search algorithm on April 21, 2015. The changes are intended to favor mobile-friendly websites in Google searches. This means any website that is not configured for smartphones may not appear in Google search results.
If your website is not already mobile-friendly—meaning it's configured for Responsive Web Design (RWD)—your site will appear lower when users search for you. In some cases, your site may not appear at all.
However, Google has said that pages that aren't mobile friendly but do have high-quality content for the search query could still rank high. Such pages won't rank below mobile-friendly pages that have lower quality content.
In order to gauge the serverity of the impact these changes will have on your site, you need to understand your site's mobile footprint. This means figuring out how many users find and visit your site through a Google search on their mobile device.
To help you, University Communications has created a custom dashboard in Google Analytics. All sites in the UB Content Management System (UBCMS) are Google Analytics enabled. We've also created a "how-to" sheet (Assessing Your Website's Readiness for Google Mobile-Search) that will take you through the process of understanding your site's mobile footprint step by step.