Google Search Redirection – Smartphone Functionality

Google has always been a saviour in times of trouble or doubt. Anything and everything we need to know is available at our finger tips. All we need to do is type in our query into the search bar and within seconds lots of results are displayed. Even while we are on the go we can get answers to most of our questions through our smartphones. In this era where smartphones and tablets are the ‘in’ thing, most people use their mobiles for browsing and internet experience. So when you develop your web pages, it is highly important that your websites are both desktop and palmtop compatible.

Googlebot-Mobile crawler:

Google’s tool ‘Googlebot-Mobile crawler was developed with the intention of helping smartphone users get search results quicker on their smartphones. Googlebot crawls content which is optimized for smartphones and provides a better experience for mobile users. One feature of this tool is that when a user enters a website, the tool checks if a mobile compatible version is available, and if found, the tool changes the link displayed in the search result and redirects the user to the mobile version of the site. This helps in saving around 0.5-1 sec of search time and user gets a faster browsing experience.

How to optimize your site for mobile users:

• URL of the site helps a great deal in differentiating the sites designed for desktop and for mobile. While most of the sites start with www.example.com for desktop version, the respective mobile version could be m.example.com where the ‘m’ indicates that it is the mobile compatible version. Googlebot mobile easily identifies this and redirects all searches appropriately. The tool also adds the respective page to the correct index in the search result, irrespective of whether you have a separate site for the mobile and desktop versions.
• Displaying important contents in your site in the front pages of the mobile version will be helpful. A user browsing your site on the desktop can easily access each sub-links with the sitemap and read all the info they need. But a mobile user may not be able to look for sitemaps in detail and may miss out on the important information that you want to throw across. Thus it is better that a different version of your site is designed for mobile users in a way that whatever you feel are the important aspects of your website are shown in the 1st page and the lesser important content are pushed to the later pages. This way both desktop users and mobile users get a fare share of the information they are looking for.
• Reconfigure your site which makes it fit properly on a mobile screen. It becomes difficult for users to scroll through the small screen that they hold in their hands. Instead, if the site is redesigned to suit a mobile screen it will be a better viewing experience for users too.
• Minimize the use of columns and side bars on your page. It becomes a tedious task for mobile users to view such content by scrolling horizontally and vertically and ultimately they decide to go for a better responsive site. Instead, display content for mobile browsers in a more readable and sentence format. After all, mobile users do not access sites to see its beauty and design. They just need information and it’s up to you to provide the information in the most readable manner.
• Test your site on various designs. Some browsers may be able to render your site correctly on the device while other browsers may not be able to render. In such cases you need to update the codes and configure the site to be working on all type of mobile browsers as well.
• Compare your sites with various other mobile compatible sites. This way you get a better idea about how a well configured site provides you a good browsing feel and you can in turn use the same to design your sites too. After all, when you are satisfied with your site look and feel then it is bound to impress other users too.

Written above are just a few ways which can help your site gain popularity in the Google search results both in the desktop and on the mobile. When you have designed your site don’t you want all type of users to enjoy the experience as well? If your answer is yes, then just spend a few extra hours and ensure that your site is accessed by all people and it gains popularity across all platforms.