Test your Website Online for Mobile Friendly view
In continuation to the Google notification on the mobile-first indexing preference, Google has implemented "Rolling out mobile-first indexing" after year and half of detailed experiments and testing.
What it means for Google?
- Google will validate and rank the site based on the way the website is mobile friendly and its responsiveness, this also means Google is moving out of the traditional way of indexing and ranking the website based on Desktop appearance.
What it means for Website Owners or Creators?
- As a website owners or creators, we should make our website mobile friendly and responsive towards mobile viewing. As owner of the website you are also needing to optimize the java scripts or any other scripts which is used on the website to adapt to the mobile responsiveness, else the script would be blocked
How to check if your website is mobile friendly as google view it?
Is your web page mobile-friendly?
About this tool - Test how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device. Just enter a page URL to see how your page scores.
Mobile-Friendly Test Tool - Having a mobile-friendly website is a critical part of your online presence. In many countries, smartphone traffic now exceeds desktop traffic. If you haven't made your website mobile-friendly, you should. Search Console's Mobile-Friendly Test Tool is a quick, easy way to test whether a page on your site is mobile-friendly.
Using the tool - The Mobile-Friendly test tool is easy to use; simply type in the full URL of the web page that you want to test. Any redirects implemented by the page will be followed by the test. The test typically takes less than a minute to run.
Test results include a screenshot of how the page looks to Google on a mobile device, as well as a list of any mobile usability problems that it finds. Mobile usability problems are issues that can affect a user that visits the page on a mobile (small screen) device, including small font sizes (which are hard to read on a small screen) and use of Flash (which isn't supported by most mobile devices).
If the page can't be reached
If for some reason the tool cannot access the page, it will display an error describing the problem. Access problems include network connectivity issues or the site being down.
If the page can't be fully loaded (unloadable resources)
If a test cannot load all resources used by a page, you will get a warning. Resources are external elements included by the page, such as images, CSS, or script files. This can happen for several reasons:
- The resource wasn't loadable in a reasonable amount of time. In this case, try running the test again. If it continues to happen, consider hosting the resource somewhere else, or else try to discover and fix the reason for lack of response from the host.
- The resource does not exist in the location listed (404 error). Fix the resource URL.
- The resource is inaccessible to non-logged-in users. The test accesses the page as an anonymous user; ensure that all resources are accessible to anonymous users.
- The resource is blocked to Googlebot by a robots.txt file. If the resource is important (see below), if it is on your own site, you might want to unblock the resource to Googlebot; if it is on another site, you might want to contact the site's webmaster and ask to have it unblocked.
- Unblocking important resources
If a blocked resource is important, it could have a big effect on how Google understands the page. For example, a blocked large image could make a page appear to be mobile-friendly when it is not, or a blocked CSS file could result in incorrect font styles being applied (for example, too small for a device). This affects both the mobile usability score and Google's ability to crawl your page. You should make sure that important resources are not blocked to Googlebot by robots.txt and are generally accessible.
Mobile-usability errors
The Mobile-Friendly Test tool can identify the following usability errors:
- Flash usage - Most mobile browsers do not render Flash-based content. Therefore, mobile visitors will not be able to use a page that relies on Flash in order to display content, animations, or navigation. We recommend designing your look and feel and page animations using modern web technologies. Read more about Look and Feel in our Web Fundamentals guide.
- Viewport not configured - Because visitors to your site use a variety of devices with varying screen sizes—from large desktop monitors, to tablets and small smartphones—your pages should specify a viewport using the meta viewport tag. This tag tells browsers how to adjust the page’s dimension and scaling to suit the device. Learn more in Responsive Web Design Basics
- Fixed-width viewport - This report shows those pages with a viewport set to a fixed width. Some web developers define the viewport to a fixed pixel size in order to adjust a non-responsive page to suit common mobile screen sizes. To fix this error, adopt a responsive design for your site’s pages, and set the viewport to match the device’s width and scale accordingly. Read how to correctly Set the Viewport in our Web Fundamentals.
- Content not sized to viewport - This report indicates pages where horizontal scrolling is necessary to see words and images on the page. This happens when pages use absolute values in CSS declarations, or use images designed to look best at a specific browser width (such as 980px). To fix this error, make sure the pages use relative width and position values for CSS elements, and make sure images can scale as well. Read more in Size Content to Viewport.
- Small font size - This report identifies pages where the font size for the page is too small to be legible and would require mobile visitors to “pinch to zoom” in order to read. After specifying a viewport for your web pages, set your font sizes to scale properly within the viewport. Read more about font size best practices in Use Legible Font Sizes.
- Touch elements too close - This report shows the URLs for sites where touch elements, such as buttons and navigational links, are so close to each other that a mobile user cannot easily tap a desired element with their finger without also tapping a neighboring element. To fix these errors, make sure to correctly size and space buttons and navigational links to be suitable for your mobile visitors. Read more in Size Tap Targets Appropriately.
Why mobile? The web is being accessed more and more on mobile devices. Designing your websites to be mobile friendly ensures that your pages perform well on all devices.
Mobile is changing the world. Today, everyone has smartphones with them, constantly communicating and looking for information. In many countries, the number of smartphones has surpassed the number of personal computers; having a mobile-friendly website has become a critical part of having an online presence. If you haven't made your website mobile-friendly, you should. The majority of users coming to your site are likely to be using a mobile device.
- If you don't know if your website is mobile-friendly, take the Mobile Friendly Test now!
- If you used content management software like Wordpress to build you website, Check out our guide to customize your website software.
- If you don't use such software, consider hiring a web developer. We have a checklist of things to care about when doing so.
- If you're technical enough to do it yourself, check our Mobile SEO Guide.
- If you want to know more about the reasons why you should create a mobile-friendly website, read on!
About Search Console
- Search Console alerts you about critical site errors such as detection of hacked content, and helps you manage how your content appears in search results.
