A decade has almost passed since the mobile user experience was developed, and since then, it has been constantly evolving, as the percentage of online searches performed on mobile devices have increased, and the market has to keep up and evolve according to the users needs.

It is due to this trend that Google has been emphasizing on the mobile-friendliness of websites, and has tested changes like the mobile usability reports in Google Webmaster Tools, mobile-friendly icons, and sent mobile-usability warnings to non-mobile friendly sites, but finally, all of this changes point to one aspect: The Mobile – Friendly Ranking Factor.

On February 26 Google published on their Webmaster Tools Blog, that all website owners will have until April 21 to have their sites optimized for mobile, as it will start to favor mobile-friendly websites to rank higher than non-responsive websites.

Google is currently working on an algorithm change that will boost the emphasis on mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor and it promises to have a significant impact on search rankings.

Starting on April 21st, all non-responsive websites will be affected by the roll-out of this Google algorithm update, and it completely affect the way we perceive and understand mobile searches.

Google hasn’t released the specifics of this update. According to Smart Insights, as of today, over 80% of online searches are made through mobile devices, a statistic that promises to keep increasing year after year, so it is important to understand that non-mobile friendly website’s visibility will be severely affected if not optimized for mobile devices, causing their ranking to drop dramatically in mobile searches.

What Can You Do?

The only thing you can do to prevent your website’s rank to drop in mobile searches is optimizing your website for mobile devices, and that is, to make it responsive.

As Google continues launching updates, the only thing you can do is to to take the necessary preventative steps to not lose the rank your website has today, because a drop on your ranking can be more difficult to recover and cost you more money, than optimizing your website for mobile devices.

For more information on how to optimize your website for mobile, read our blog, and learn about the benefits of responsive web design.