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Mobile Usability Reports Come To Google Webmaster Tools

Google adds mobile usability reports to Webmaster Tools, is this another sign mobile usability is coming to Google as a ranking signal?

Barry Schwartz on October 29, 2014 at 8:59 am

Google announced a new feature available in Google Webmaster Tools this morning for tracking your mobile usability issues. The new report is named the Mobile Usability report and it is available at google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-usability within Google Webmaster Tools.

The tool will show you common usability issues with your mobile site, so that you can fix them and improve your mobile experience for your users.

The specific errors the report shows are flash content (which they issue warnings for), missing viewport meta-tag for mobile pages, tiny fonts that are hard to read on mobile, fixed-width viewports, content not sized to viewport, and clickable links/buttons too close to each other.

John Mueller from Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst team based in Zurich said they “strongly recommend you take a look at these issues in Webmaster Tools.” Why? He doesn’t mention any ranking signals but it does seem based on Google’s back talk, mobile UX will be a ranking signal in Google’s algorithm in the near future. This new report is just one more sign that this ranking signal is indeed coming.

Here is a screen shot of a sample report:

Either way, mobile traffic is only being a larger part of your overall traffic, so implementing these suggestions may make a lot of sense, outside of its ranking potential.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.