Google has announced a shift in policy to reward sites with good mobile optimization with better AdWords performance. If you promote your site with Google AdWords, your ads will drive traffic at a lower cost if they link to your mobile-optimized site.
The blog post cites a recent study that found that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a website that offered a bad mobile Web experience. This adjustment to AdWords is an incentive for site administrators to improve mobile experiences.
The New Web Is Mobile
Google needs the Web to work well on mobile, or the quality of its search results will dwindle. If users give up on a site that has a bad mobile experience, Google’s results turning up that site will be less relevant. Last year, Google began to limit ad serving on smartphones if the ads pointed to Flash-heavy content. Flash performs slowly and drains batteries on smartphones, and it isn’t installed on iOS devices at all. So Google already has a precedent for punishing bad mobile websites. Yesterday’s policy change rewards good ones.
Don’t know where to begin to optimize your site for the mobile Web? Don’t worry. Google has an app for that. In June, Google launched a completely free mobile site builder as part of Google Sites. It offers a range of themed templates for different kinds of businesses, and there’s also a custom option. The templates are basic, but basic is good enough to keep users happy.
What are your favorite mobile sites? Your least favorite? Share them in the comments.
