Starting tomorrow, Google's mobile search algorithm is changing to emphasize web sites that are mobile-friendly. What does this mean for your real estate website? If your site isn't optimized and easy to use for mobile users, it will likely get less traffic and go down in the search rankings when people use their mobile devices.
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A site is considered to be 'mobile-friendly' if it's fast loading, features readable text without zooming, properly sizes content and photos so the user doesn't have to scroll sideways, and has links that are easy to click.
According to the Digital House Hunt study by NAR, 89% of new home shoppers use a mobile search engine throughout the buying process. Google warned back in February that the change "will have a significant impact in our search results."
Mobile searches are only growing in popularity. According to ZDNet, "Google is believed to get about half its search traffic from mobile devices. One of the company's top search execs said in 2014 that he expected the number of mobile searches to top desktop queries that year."
Google's new algorithm will help find relevant mobile content in two ways:
If you want to see if your real estate business site is considered mobile-friendly, Google offers a Mobile-Friendly Test. They also have a guide to building mobile-friendly sites.