Changes to Google search to favour smartphone users.

[Smivs]

I just spotted this article on the Sky News website. It seems that Google are making some big changes and are going to heavily bias their search results in favour of mobile-friendly websites.
They do provide an analysis service here which will analyse your site and tell you how mobile-friendly it is, with advice about changes that could be made to the site.
My own website has considerable room for improvement. As it happens I am part-way through revising it anyway.
Sadly, oolite.org doesn't fare so well either It comes out quite badly which suggests that it could be dropped down the search ranking. The main 'problems' are too-small text, the links are too close together and apparently it needs a viewport configured (whatever that means!).
Personally I am none too happy about all this. I don't have a smart-phone or tablet, and my surfing experience is already suffering from too much phone-friendly web design - pages designed for tiny screens often look rubbish on a proper monitor, and this trend seems set to get worse.

[Cody]

Yeah, I was reading about this on El Reg earlier - and as you say, the trend is ever downwards! <sighs>

[another_commander]

Personally, I couldn't give a rat's what google wants to do. For sure I'm not going to spend sleepless nights trying to adjust to their version of how the world should work.

[Cody]

Right on, Admiral! Google execs will be among the first against the wall when the revolution comes!

[Disembodied]

I think this is more important in particularly crowded areas of the search spectrum: if squillions of websites are selling Dancing Crap On A Stick, then Dancing Crap On A Stick vendors with unoptimised websites will wither and die. But there aren't that many websites in the sort of search pool that would throw up oolite.org, anyway: conceivably we might lose out to the geology buffs, but I doubt many of them will be redesigning their sites so they can be viewed on tablets, phablets, phones, watches, swatches, google-goggles or any other escapees from the subconscious of Dr Seuss.

[ClymAngus]

Hmm crimsonforge needs brushing up anyway. I may take a look at some mobile templates that draw the same data.

That way people can have their "my first website" big font version if they want to and I won't have to sacrifice all the sexy design work I put in.

Hmm, there are options here for taking advantage of the split in the market.....

[cim]

Looking at the article it seems that this will only affect mobile search, which seems more reasonable - no point in returning search results which won't work well on that device.

The issues identified are probably fixable without too much effort, and I have a little bit of work I need to do on the addons system anyway, so I'll have a look while I'm there, but it doesn't seem like it'll be a big deal if I don't.

But there aren't that many websites in the sort of search pool that would throw up oolite.org, anyway

Indeed. If you search for "Oolite" because you can't remember what the URL is, it'll appear and that'll probably still be true even if you search on mobile tomorrow. If you search for pretty much anything else vaguely related like "space game" it appears far enough down the list today that I gave up clicking "next" because there's hundreds of the things and many of them have actual marketing budgets.

[Diziet Sma]

It seems that Google are making some big changes and are going to heavily bias their search results in favour of mobile-friendly websites.

Tell me about it.. this is on my to-do list for the website of my brother's business.. total PITA.

[Wildeblood]

Google execs will be among the first against the wall when the revolution comes!

I like this guy's rhetorical style.

[ClymAngus]

Ok so youtube (ie google) have discontinued support for (old) devices. Is three years old? Not for a human certainly.
Now google itself is pushing searches for the very devices that youtube is no longer supporting.

So through sheer deduction; google is trying to create an environment where by people who have hand held devices that are less than 3 years old are better catered to than the rest of us.

The evidence suggests an agenda and not a very environmentally friendly one at that. It's corporate, soulless and hollow.

You know that "do no harm" motto is starting to look a little shallow. "make more money", "exercise more control", "internets for the rich" or "F**k the enviroment" would probably be more apt.

[Alex]

Just coz google are expanding into mobile doesn't mean they are dropping their meta data. Or the access to.
Besidies there are heaps of others.

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/search-engines

Most universities do too if your interested a specific topic.

university search engines accessable by public

I put that in google, they biased it to the country I live in.
Thats a nice thought, wonder what would happen if I specify a country or even a region of a country.
not interested enough to do it.

[Diziet Sma]

You know that "do no harm" motto is starting to look a little shallow. "make more money", "exercise more control", "internets for the rich" or "F**k the enviroment" would probably be more apt.

Well, their original motto was "Don't be evil", but they abandoned all pretence at living by that, a long time ago.

[ClymAngus]

Don't be evil eh? That just makes it worse.