You do not want to get email from Google – really! Just this week Google started posting in the Webmaster Control Panel and emailing website owners notifications like this one.
“Google systems have tested 25 pages from your site and found that 96% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these 24 pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.”
Seeing as this site has only 25 pages, that means that Google is in essence saying “you’ve got big problems!”
Earlier in the year, Google warned that they would be evaluating websites for mobile friendliness and they also stated that this notification such as this one in this blog post would be the first step. The second step, Google stated, would be to mark the site in the Google mobile search index as not viewable on a mobile phone. Yikes, that sounds like a soft penalty.
Google also alluded to a third step which to many webmasters such as myself appears to be a organic penalty. Although Google may be slow to take this last action, they are clearly working their plan starting just this past week.
Many legacy websites are simply not responsive designed and are not mobile friendly. The site that received this notification is over 8 years old. If your site was not built in the last two years, expect to be getting notification of problems too.
I invite you to review our prices and programs to help you move your legacy website to a responsive site that Google will love. Find out more today.