New Google Ranking of Mobile-friendliness Could Hit Vacation Rental Bookings

Earlier this year, Google gave warning of the change with this announcement: ‘Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.’

Mobile-friendliness now essential

Before this upgrade, the ‘mobile-friendliness’ of your site would help it get noticed by Google webcrawlers. Once the upgrade bites, it will be an essential factor in getting it noticed. What they mean by mobile-friendliness is the ability of your website to be easily viewed and navigated on the mobile devices that are now used by many. These include laptop computers, tablets and smartphones which are now so popular with our vacation rental guests. The popularity of mobile devices with internet connection has grown rapidly, year on year, for some time. And the importance of the mobile-friendliness of your website has been highlighted by commentators, including ourselves in an earlier blog ‘Who Needs a Mobile Website?’.

Potential to increase business

Following the Google change, those websites that do not take action and become mobile-responsive will be less visible in Google searches and will lose business. Those that are already mobile-responsive will hold business with the potential to increase it by becoming more visible on Google. Upgrading the mobile-friendliness of your website is costly. We were approached by providers offering a solution which included ‘a plethora of options to create a beautiful, mobile-responsive site that your visitors will love and that Google will respect and serve up in mobile searches. ‘And with 48% of mobile research beginning in search engines, that’s important!’ they added.

Benefits for Homes and Rooms subscribers

They’re right about that last bit! But if you’re already a Homes and Rooms subscriber with a website, you won’t need any costly upgrade. The free website provided when you joined is mobile-responsive and optimizes your website for viewing and navigation on all mobile devices. If you’re not already a subscriber, consider taking out a Homes and Rooms subscription which offers you mobile responsiveness plus a great many more features developed specifically to help vacation rental owners run their properties more profitably. Why upgrade your own website at great cost when you can have instead a mobile-optimized website with a host of useful web tools?