Google has announced that an update to their search engine page rank algorithm. Beginning in April, mobile optimized sites may rank higher in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) than non-mobile optimized websites. My understanding was that this had been happening for a while now when searches were initiated from mobile devices (Maybe someone can check me here).
Ultimately, this is just further motivation to get your site (or important parts of it) up to mobile snuff as soon as possible.
Some details I lifted from SteetFight.com (and you should certainly please click the link to that excellent publication since I grabbed so much from them):
- The algorithm will be real-time. This means that after the algorithm change goes live, you will benefit from having a mobile-friendly site as soon as Google detects the change. So while the argument is the sooner the better, there is no need to stress out if getting your site ready by the April deadline is completely unrealistic.
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The ranking factor will be evaluated on a page-by-page basis. This means you can prioritize optimization of parts of your site, perhaps keeping some of the more difficult sections of the site for after the deadline.