PP Blog Addresses Change In Google Search Algorithm To Accommodate ‘Mobile’ Readers

The PP Blog on a desktop or laptop (left), and the Blog on an Android or Windows mobile phone (right). The Blog is making certain changes to accommodate a change in the Google search algorithm that reportedly will benefit users of mobile devices.

The PP Blog has been experimenting with ways to render the Blog better on mobile phones. This has occurred in response to an upcoming change in the Google search algorithm.

“Starting April 21, Google Search will be expanding its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal,” Google said. “This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in Google Search results. Users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results optimized for their devices.”

Desktop and laptop visitors to the PP Blog should continue to see something that approximates the rendering at the left, as shown in the screen shot on the left. Mobile-phone readers should see something that approximates the rendering shown on the right side of the screen shot.

Because we’re still experimenting, some mobile readers may see something that approximates the image below.

As the Blog adjusts to changes in the Google search algorithm, some mobile readers will see a rendering approximating the one shown in this screen shot.

In Response To The Change In The Google Search Algorithm

The Blog is using the mobile utility of Jetpack now and also has been testing WPtouch.

In the spirit of this transition to accommodate mobile traffic, the Blog has adopted a mobile favicon and implemented some other changes. One of them is that we’ve brought back Gravatars. We briefly used them long ago, but dropped them because we were concerned about a drag on system resources.

After years of Blogging, we’re still inexpert at SEO. Along those lines, we have continuing concerns about material online that is presented not as free-form journalism, but as an effort to steal traffic and game search engines.

Here we’ll point out that Akismet has blocked more than 1.366 million spams sent to the PP Blog by bots and humans over the past six years. (Yes, more than 1.366 million.)

These forced interlopers want to ride on our bandwidth — usually in a bid to send traffic to an almost countless number of schemes, including knockoff designer goods. In recent days, the Akismet system blocked a spam from a sender with the name of “isis,” so some people apparently have adopted the belief that there’s money to be made by adopting the moniker of an international terrorist organization that beheads journalists, humanitarian aid workers and other human beings it enslaves.

And, as the Blog reported last year in the context of our TelexFree coverage, some HYIP spammers were trying to use the name of traditional MLM companies to drive traffic to outrageous fraud schemes. (This occurred after some MLMers spammed funeral notices in pursuit on downline recruits for TelexFree, of course.)

At the moment, it’s hard to say precisely what this change in the Google search algorithm will mean to the PP Blog. One Google analysis says we’ve passed the test, but another says we’re still not mobile-friendly.

DISCLOSURE: The PP Blog has a business relationship with Google.