Google Adds Alerts in Search Results for Site Owner’s Non-Mobile-Friendly

If you still haven’t updated your site to be mobile friendly yet, Google has added yet another level of alerts to site owners whose sites aren’t mobile friendly.  In addition to notices sent previously in Google Search Console, Google is now showing an alert right on your search result, when you do a vanity search for your name.

Here as an example of an old legacy site of mine that I have not redesigned with a mobile friendly template.

This only shows in the mobile search results, it does no show up as an alert when you search on desktop.

It only shows when you are logged into your Google account connected to the Google Search Console for the site.

This probably also helps alerting those webmasters who don’t regularly check their Google Search Console accounts for notices and for those who don’t receive email alerts about their site.

Google has been pushing site owners to go mobile friendly for the past couple of years, as the number of mobile searches is greater than the number of desktop searches.  And with Google increasing the mobile friendly ranking signal in May, it makes sense that Google is adding this extra reminder to site owners to ensure their site is mobile friendly and receives the boost.

It will be interesting to see if Google uses this to alert site owners to other issues on their site.  While we have seen “this site may be hacked” warnings tagged on search results, this is the first time we have seen alerts that are only seen by verified site owners of the property in Google Search Console.

Added: John Mueller from Google confirmed they are only showing these alerts for not being mobile friendly.

@jenstar At the moment it's just those, but I think it's a really neat experiment. Which others should we add?

— John Mueller (@JohnMu) April 7, 2016

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post

Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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