Google adds “Business Friendly“ Mobile Friendly Testing Tool

Didit Editorial

9 years ago

June 8, 2016: For more than a year, Google been attempting to persuade site proprietors to make their sites mobile-friendly, and its original Mobile Friendly Test Page has proved very useful in this task. And back in March Google doubled down, announcing that mobile-friendliness would increase as a ranking factor in May of 2016.

At the beginning of June, Google launched a “business friendly” version of the of the original test page. While the diagnostics engine powering it appears to work identically with that associated with the old page, its graphics are better, there’s more explanatory material explaining the virtues of mobile-friendliness, and Google includes a way to request a list of “specific fixes” for diagnosed problems via email (Google promises to send the report within 24 hours).

Google also makes it easier for business owners to find help for mobile-friendly issues. The new tool provides a list of hosting providers capable of building sites that work smoothly across all devices, including Wix.com, Weebly.com, and Duda.com. (Oddly, WordPress, a platform which powers a huge percentage of websites today and has available hundreds of mobile-friendly themes, wasn’t included on the list).

Just like in the old tool, you’re not limited to testing your own site for mobile-friendliness, you can test any URL. This feature can be very useful if you’re doing competitive analysis, especially in the small business sector. As Didit reported last year, many sites maintained by small businesses, including lawyers, restaurants, and local health care facilities, suffered from mobile-friendly issues. Even large cap companies have experienced major mobile-friendly issues.

Even tech companies aren’t always perfectly mobile friendly. Just for fun, I tested Googl.com and Facebook.com, and neither got a terrific score; Facebook scored a lackluster 51 out of 100 on the “Mobile Speed” test, which Google considers Poor. Google, on the other hand, scored 100 percent on the “Mobile Speed” test but scored only a 69 (Poor) score on the desktop.

Avoiding MobileGeddon is increasingly important as mobile usage continues to drive web traffic. Are you sure you’re mobile-friendly? Go here to learn the truth from Google itself:

https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/