Discussion:
Google Tweaking for Tablets?
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David Kaye
2015-05-29 21:08:10 UTC
Permalink
My web host sent along a link to a Google page where they talk about
optimizing web pages for tablets. I happen to think that several of my
pages look just fine on tablets. However, Google has an analytic that gives
all my pages really bad ratings in terms of font size, certain embedded
code, etc. I get lots of smiles for not having scripts running (I'm serving
static pages), but that's about all Google likes about my pages.

Google says that they're going to CHANGE the way they rank pages based on
how well the pages pass their analytics, that is, how well they will display
on tablets.

This annoys me a lot because Google's search used to always be about
content, not prettiness. So, now it becomes a dog and pony show <sigh> just
like everything else in modern merchandising.

I'm wondering, though, will this really be that important? Google isn't
saying they're going to block results that point to ugly pages, but that
they're going to change the ranking. The only search where Google has been
especially helpful to me is to land users on my SF Games page. Put in terms
such as "San Francisco" and "games" and the SF Games page is usually either
first or second. That's important in getting new gamers. But otherwise,
other pages such as my tech support or software pages don't come up except
when using very unique words anyway, because there've always been so much
competition that I would never be able to show up in Google's results
without buying their advertising.

So, should I (we, you, anybody) be concerned about Google's support of
pretty results over relevant ones?

Here's a URL to their analytics page:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

Comments?




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Eli the Bearded
2015-05-29 23:47:47 UTC
Permalink
Post by David Kaye
Google says that they're going to CHANGE the way they rank pages based on
how well the pages pass their analytics, that is, how well they will display
on tablets.
They also claim good content can trump a displays well score.
Post by David Kaye
So, should I (we, you, anybody) be concerned about Google's support of
pretty results over relevant ones?
Probably not. In an HTML group[*] I've read (in other words, this is pure
hearsay), for a well designed HTML page, some variant of a <META
name=viewport> header (as in inside <HEAD></HEAD>) is all you really need.
Post by David Kaye
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
They (google webmaster tools) seem to use:

<meta content="initial-scale=1, width=device-width" name=viewport>

Basically this is working around a brain-dead assumption made by mobile
browsers that a page with no viewport size specified should be treated
as if it were meant to be displayed on a much larger screen. It also
helps to know that "viewport" as been defined to be "the size available
for the content", similar to window size on a desktop browser and
distinct from screen size.

Elijah
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[*] comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html
n***@sbcglobal.net
2015-05-30 19:12:27 UTC
Permalink
Post by David Kaye
My web host sent along a link to a Google page where they talk about
optimizing web pages for tablets. I happen to think that several of my
pages look just fine on tablets. However, Google has an analytic that gives
all my pages really bad ratings in terms of font size, certain embedded
code, etc. I get lots of smiles for not having scripts running (I'm serving
static pages), but that's about all Google likes about my pages.
Google says that they're going to CHANGE the way they rank pages based on
how well the pages pass their analytics, that is, how well they will display
on tablets.
This annoys me a lot because Google's search used to always be about
content, not prettiness. So, now it becomes a dog and pony show <sigh> just
like everything else in modern merchandising.
I'm wondering, though, will this really be that important? Google isn't
saying they're going to block results that point to ugly pages, but that
they're going to change the ranking. The only search where Google has been
especially helpful to me is to land users on my SF Games page. Put in terms
such as "San Francisco" and "games" and the SF Games page is usually either
first or second. That's important in getting new gamers. But otherwise,
other pages such as my tech support or software pages don't come up except
when using very unique words anyway, because there've always been so much
competition that I would never be able to show up in Google's results
without buying their advertising.
So, should I (we, you, anybody) be concerned about Google's support of
pretty results over relevant ones?
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
Comments?
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My two sites got "Awesome! Your site is mobile friendly". That's because I used Hugo to create them and focused on testing and authoring them for both mobile and desktop.

Hugo generates static pages too but is easy to use and is really just an app built with Google Go that runs on a variety of desktop platforms. You don't need to install anything extra to run it. I did build a script for automated updates to the host though as the built-in code mainly works with GitHub as a host.

I sell both desktop and mobile apps and the market is shifting from desktop to mobile. My users want better tablet apps. The first wave of mobile apps were generally reduced feature sets of the desktop. Now they want the whole banana on tablet. And of course not pay much for it. (;
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