Improving mobile search results

Original author: Takaki Makino, Yoon Chae Sung (Chaesang Jung), Doantam Phan (Doantam Phan)
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Hello, Habr! Are you often looking for something on your smartphone? Stumbled upon terrible mobile versions of sites? From this day everything should change.



Search on mobile devices differs from desktop: users need current and fresh results, regardless of where they are and how much quality connection they use. Mobile app? Wonderful. A “classic” site? Good. Mobile version? Fine. But what if the developer did not take care of the competent handling of redirects from the desktop version to the mobile? Users lose time because of this, sometimes money, nerves, plane tickets and much more.

As mobile devices are increasingly used to access the network, the Internet and our algorithmsmust adapt to new conditions.

We started with updates that ensure the correct settings and viewing sites in the results on modern devices . After that, we made it easier for users to define pages that were optimized for mobile devices and implemented indexing applications to display useful information from within applications. Today we’ll talk about two important changes that will help users more often find content adapted for mobile devices.

Search results will have more sites optimized for mobile devices.


From April 21, we will change the ranking of results: the convenience of the page for mobile devices will be taken into account by the search engine as a signal. The new algorithm will affect mobile search in all languages ​​around the world and greatly change the search results on mobile devices. Users will often find relevant, high-quality pages optimized for viewing from mobile phones and tablets.

An example of issuance with sites that are convenient for mobile

To make it easier for website developers to adapt to the new conditions that will appear as a result of these changes, we have prepared a guide for creating websites optimized for mobile devices . In almost two months, webmasters can prepare for the upcoming changes with the following tools that let you understand how Googlebot sees pages:


More relevant app content in search results


You can evaluate the second change today. Six months ago, we already talked about the beginning of the application indexing program. At that time, the search engine could show content from indexed applications in the search results if two conditions were met. Firstly, the user must be logged into the Google account, and secondly, the application must be installed on this user's smartphone / tablet.



Now, the search results use not only information from installed programs, but also the contents of indexed Android applications that are available on Google Play. In other words, all that is required for the search results to appear from applications is to log in to your Google account and use the search on the Android device. Thus, everyone gets what they want: users - important and necessary content, developers - a link to their application on Google Play, if the user liked the content.
If you, the developer, want Google search to draw information from your application, check out our walkthrough on the developer site .

Example output for a user who has applications installed

That's all. Update applications, implement indexing of their content, check your sites for proper adaptation of content for mobile phones, and may the power of Google Search be with you .

If you have questions about sites for mobile devices or indexing applications - go to our forum for webmasters and our community , they will certainly help you!

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