Earlier today, Google has announced the launch of “Test My Site with Google”, its new diagnostic tool which should assist small businesses in creating better mobile websites, which is precisely what the tech giant wants. The tool should give small companies a good idea of what they need to do in order to better optimize their websites for smartphones and has been specifically designed for non-tech savvy users. All you need to do in order to analyze your website with this new tool is enter its URL in order to perform a basic diagnostic check. Google will then determine whether your site is optimized for mobile devices or not and will let you know about any potential problems in the latter scenario.
“Test My Site with Google” is slated to launch in May, almost a year after the so-called “Mobilegeddon” series of search engine’s algorithm updates which started giving mobile-friendly websites a significant boost in rankings on Google’s search results pages. As the company revealed back then, the reason behind those updates lied in the fact that almost half of its searches came from mobile users which meant that Google naturally wanted to serve its customers with pages that are better suited for viewing on their devices. Factors like the usage of large text, reliable navigation, and automatically resizable pages hence became much more crucial to good final rankings on Google. However, the said changes heavily impacted small business as less than a quarter of them actually had a mobile-optimized website by September of last year, as suggested by one of RBC Capital’s latest studies. A certain Adobe research suggests that this resulted in more small businesses buying ads from Google, but the tech giant still wasn’t thrilled with that scenario as it only meant a short-term boost to its finances and it was still unlikely that potential customers will stick around on horribly optimized websites. Of course, if customers aren’t returning, more and more businesses will decide against buying ads from Google in the future.
As one of Google’s managing director of small-to-medium business sales, Yong Su Kim reveals, his employer wants to make sure that it’s doing what it can “to help advertisers make the most of it.” Kim also stated that he believes small businesses often don’t have the means to ensure their customers have a good mobile experience and Google will do what it can to assist them both with tools like “Test My Site with Google” and recommendations of website-building companies. However, he’s quick to point out that Google’s partners won’t be paying to be recommended.