Smartphones and tablets are categorized as “mobile devices”. In contrast, non-mobile computers are the types computers that either sit on your floor or desk. The are very likely to have a cable running from it to a display monitor. The types of computers that has it’s guts built-into the back of its display monitor are also consider non-mobile devices. And though laptops and notebooks are often taken out of the home or office or classroom, the too are categorized as “desktop computers“. And the operating system software written for the two types are significantly different. The operating systems on mobile devices are not full computer operating systems. The Google Search Algorithm considers laptops / notebook to be “non-mobile devices”.

Google New Search Page Rank

Prior to the super fast development of mobile devices, the browsers Safari, Internet Explorer (Exploder), Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Netscape, Sea Monkey, Pale Moon, Midori etc. were designed for the desktop / non-mobile device computers. A browser running on a mobile device will display a webpage very differently than that same webpage viewed in a browser designed for the desktop computer, and will display it inferiorly. Hence the website is referred to as “non-responsive.”

On April 21st Google, http://bit.ly/1Ef4QNI recoded their Google Search algorithm  to determine website “responsiveness” on smart phones and tablets (mobile devices) and will rank search results low for websites that are “un-responsive”. Responsive  means that a webpage’s visual images, links, text and their layout, renders the same on mobile devices  as they render within the browser of a notebook or desktop computers. Before we had mobile devices, we only had web design coded for desktop-type computers and for the browsers used on them. Then mobile boomed, and the same code  website simply doesn’t render automatically on browsers made for mobile devices.

Arvind Narayanan presents this invigoratingly well in his April 21st CITP luncheon talk.

Responsive Web Design

Responsive Web Design (RWD) provides an optimal viewing experience on mobile browsers. Some are calling this Google Search criteria change Mobile Geddon. Compared to viewing a website on your desktop computer, the site will look very different when viewing it on a non-RWD coded mobile device. You’ll probably be visually disoriented and frustrated, saying to yourself, “I swear that icon was right here.” Google wants visual conformity and we users do also. Google is giving website coders motivation and reason to make their sites responsive via RWD.

For instance, an image such as a “submit button” on a webpage that you’re accustomed to seeing in a particular place on a webpage, might not be in the same place on a mobile device’s browser.  It may be much larger, or too small, or may not be there at all. For example, let’s use www.TheBestWebsiteInTheWorld.Com as an example.  When crawled by the Google Search Bots in a desktop computer’s browser, the ranking was in the top 3 keyword search results. In comparison, without the site being a RWD site, it might not even be in the top 50 Google search results for those same keywords. Not only that, when the new algorithm is launched, the search rank on desktops and notebooks will even drop from a for instance, 3 to a 50. So make sure your website is “responsive”. We have advanced into a world of mobile devices functionality. We no longer have to sit in front of a desktop home, office or classroom computer to do essential everyday things that we depend on.