Google has been gently encouraging us for many years now to ensure our websites are mobile-friendly, or responsive.
This morning, whilst trawling through Google Plus, I spotted a post in which it showed how Google search results on mobile devices are now showing whether a site is mobile friendly.
The image shown to the right is just another version where I carried out a Google search on a mobile phone in the UK.
Is this a big deal? I don't know. What is clear though is that Google has been saying ‘this is the year of mobile‘ for about five years now and they certainly show no sign of letting up on that. They even have a website dedicated to making websites mobile friendly – Multi-Screen Resources.
Most of this will be presented under the guise of giving the searchers a better user experience but you can be sure this will translate into what is good for Google's revenues, i.e. what they gain from online advertising, via AdWords.
Will responsive, mobile-friendly websites see a gain in the search results? Time will tell. It will also be interesting to see if and when this ‘Mobile-friendly' label starts to appear in desktop SERPs along with warnings if a site isn't running SSL (HTTPS).
