With ‘Mobilegeddon’ here to stay, just how ‘mobile-friendly’ are .NZ domains?

If your website is not mobile-friendly, Google search results on a mobile device may not be your friend.

Recently, Google began a change that affects how websites are delivered when searched from a mobile device.

The impact of this change is that websites that are not considered ‘mobile-friendly’ will be given a lower priority than sites that are.

This is important stuff, as evidenced in the somewhat alarmist 'Mobilegeddon' language associated with the change.

So, in practical terms, what is the current state of the New Zealand website landscape in relation to mobile friendliness?

As the registry for all .nz domain names, NZRS Ltd holds a unique position in being able to evaluate the impact of Google search changes in the New Zealand context.

“We should also be clear that the NZRS website is not as mobile friendly as we would like and we have changes planned for later in the year to resolve this,” says David Morrison, Chief Marketing Officer, NZRS Ltd.

“Top of mind for us was how many websites using .nz domain names would be impacted by this change, and to what extent this change could affect mobile search results for New Zealand content?”

But as Morrison points out, why should Kiwis care?

“There are a number of factors that affect where and how a website places in Serach Engine Results Pages (SERPs),” he explains.

“Mobile friendliness is just a new and very important factor that has been added to the mix for searches conducted from mobile devices.

“If an organisation wishes to be found via mobile search, and most likely would given the rise of mobile device use, then this is important to factor into website design.”

To find out, at the beginning of May 2015, NZRS Ltd ran a test on a sample of 64,000 .nz domains (10 percent of its active 640,000 names).

According to Morrision, there are two main flags in the results, worked meaning the test actually completed, and passed signalling the test scored high enough to pass the threshold.

But before diving into the results, Morrison provides a quick look at the mobile-friendly test to understand more about what mobile-friendly means from a Google context.

“To help organisations establish if this change would affect them, Google provided the Mobile-Friendly Test,” he explains.

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“The test visits the site, fetches all the resources from the first page, and analyses it using a set of usability criteria established by Google:

• Configure Viewport: Has a Mobile Viewport been set?

• Use Legible Font Sizes: Is the Text too small to read?

• Avoid Plugins: Does use incompatible plugins

• Size Content To Viewport: Is the Content wider than screen?

• Size Tap Targets Appropriately: Links too close together?

Based on answers to the questions above, the website is scored for its ‘mobile-friendliness’ with scores over 80 percent deemed to have passed which places quite a high threshold for websites to subsequently be ranked higher on mobile search.

Initial results

“The initial results make sobering reading,” observes Morrison, who reports that of the domain names which responded with the test (48,159), a total of 60 percent failed.

• 15,841 (24.75 percent) domains did not respond to the test indicating these names did not resolve to a website.

There are names that may not resolve at all, be used for email only or suffering a temporal outage at the time of testing.

• 29,083 (45.44 percent) domains failed the test (this is any website including parking pages for domains).

• 19,076 (29.80 percent) domains passed the test (this is any website including parking pages for domains).

Furthermore, whilst 40 percent of domains passed the test, only 10 percent passed with a full score of 100.

“There is a lot of work to be done to improve the mobile-friendliness of the .nz space,” Morrison adds.

As Morrison asks, does the age of a domain affect the results?

In short, No. But what is surprising is that over half of websites using a domain name that are less than one-year-old are not mobile friendly, adds Morrison.

“This begs the question are new websites still being launched that are not mobile friendly?” he adds. “It certainly looks that way.”

So, what can be done?

So what can website managers and/or developers do to buck the trend?

“Initially, check your website with Google's Mobile-Friendly Test and if your site passes, there may be no further action required, Morrison advises.

“But if your site fails the test, review the recommendations and consider making some changes. Also, talk to your website developer or hosting provider for more details.”

For further information about how to show in mobile search results, Google has produced a reference to get businesses started, click here to check it out.