Here’s yet another incentive to make your website mobile-friendly: It seems that Google is trying to improve user experience by displaying “not mobile-friendly” icons (a picture of a phone with a slash through it) in its mobile search results.
These icons pictured below were spotted by Twitter users @malcolmcoles:
and @sandyallenphoto:
The new gray symbols are designed to quickly tell users if a website is responsive to mobile devices. However, they may not be completely accurate at this experimental stage. For instance, BBC has been labeled as “not mobile-friendly,” but the news site actually has launched a mobile version.
Google began testing mobile-friendly icons earlier this month, but now it’s testing these “not mobile-friendly” signs. Google declined to disclose when it will officially launch the feature, so perhaps it is running an A/B test to see which version is better for its user interface. Which do you prefer?