The Internet world is always changing, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the not so good. As users we are forced to take the good with the bad if we still want to play the game.

If you’re like me, you use Google a lot. It is my go-to search engine. It has been for years.

Using Google to check my own sites to see if they appear in search results is something I’ve also been doing for years. After all, we all want to be found on the Internet so people can read our blog posts.

On April 21st the ability to be found in Google search engines on mobile devices might be hampered if you’re not mobile friendly. If your website doesn’t properly fit in the apps of telephones, tablets and other small, mobile devices people use to search the Net on the go, then you have two choices:

1) fall into a black hole, never to be found by a random search

2) tweak your site to fit to make it mobile friendly.

I first learned of this change from D. G. Kaye’s website Live. Laugh. Love…And don’t forget to breathe in the post Google Search Algorithm Adds Mobile-Friendly Factors & App Indexing to Ranking.

Debby had discovered it a newsletter written by Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound.

I followed the links to the original article posted on Search Engine Land entitled Google Search Algorithm Adds Mobile-Friendly Factors & App Indexing to Ranking.

The article contains a link to a test page where you can enter your web address to see if it passes the test and is mobile friendly. My website did pass.

Noted in the comment section of the article are two things I took note of:

1) Although my home page may pass the test, another page may not. In other words, the test doesn’t evaluate the whole site at the URL, only the one page tested. This means to be certain, you’d have to check every page of the website. That’s a lot of work for someone like me who has almost 400 posts online plus other pages. I think I’ll run a few and be satisfied with the results.

2) Web Marketing Group (WMG) in the UK commented, stating they had written a post regarding this matter. In it they suggested ways to combat the issues. The post is Resolve Accessing, and Fetch and Render Issues.

This new change is not expected to affect search results for those using laptops and tabletop computers. So it will have zero effect on the way I use Google because I use the Internet only on my computer. I don’t own a mobile device.

It may affect me, however, if mobile users can’t find my website, so in this respect it’s something I have to look into.

Have you given any thought about mobile devices and the search abilities? Are you going to run your web address through the testing machine to see if it is mobile friendly?