MOBILESPACE—With the ostensible goal of "helping users find mobile-friendly pages," Google announced Tuesday on its Webmaster Central Blog that over the next few weeks it will be rolling out a "mobile-friendly" label to mobile search results.
"We see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience," said the company, adding notably, "We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal."
Indeed, the significance of the announced change was not lost on Google watchers, with the Wall Street Journal calling the new Google policy both a carrot and a potential stick.
"The label is the carrot," wrote Alistair Barr for the WSJ. "Now here’s the stick: Google said it is testing these mobile-friendly criteria and other factors as ranking signals for its search engine. That means websites designed only for desktop or laptop screens may be shunted lower on mobile-search results pages in the future.
"Google," he added, "is currently conducting limited 'A/B tests' of the mobile criteria, involving thousands of individual users rather than millions. In A/B tests, some users see one result while others see a different result, and the two are compared to see which performs better."
Barr also quotes Mark Traphagen, senior director of online marketing at Stone Temple Consulting, as observing of the move, “Google rarely says in public that something specific will rank you higher in its search results. This will change a lot of behavior.”
Traphagen also interprets the move as one of self-preservation. "Google is keen to promote mobile-friendly websites because its search engine wasn’t designed to track down content buried inside mobile apps," writes Barr. "The company is working on app-search technology, often called 'deep linking,' but if people increasingly switch to using apps rather than the mobile Web to do things online, that’s still a risk for the company, Traphagen added. In sectors like retail, travel and local, people are finding information in niche apps developed by companies like Amazon, Kayak and Yelp, rather than Google’s broad search engine."
Similarly to how a giant retailer like WalMart can force its will on suppliers, Google's influence on developers and website owners can be equally influential. As Barr notes, "Google’s search engine is a powerful tool the company can use to encourage developers to focus on areas Google thinks are important. In August, Google started giving bonus points in its ranking algorithm to Web pages that are encrypted. Google did that to prod website developers to adopt technology that protects against hackers breaking into their websites and stealing users’ information."
It would appear that Google remains committed to controlling our digital experience, for better or worse.
