Google and Mobile-Friendly and CCC Library Web Sites. By Johanna Bowen

Google and “Mobile-Friendly” and the California Community College Library Web Sites.   By Johanna Bowen, Outlook editor On April 9^th the Pew Research Center released the report “Teens, Social Media & Technology: Overview 2015.  This report detailed the extent to which mobile devices have become the primary tool for internet access. Nearly three-quarters of teens have or have access to a smartphone.  College library Web sites are highly likely to be used by smartphones when this dominant group of teens become college students.   On April 22 Facebook, the world's largest social network reported that almost three-quarters of its advertising revenue and most of its 1.44 billion users came from cellphones and other mobile devices in the first quarter of the year. On April 21 Google updated its search algorithm to boost the rankings of mobile-friendly pages – pages that are legible and usable on mobile devices.  This update only affects searches from mobile devices, creating an odd situation of differing results depending on the access tool – desktop/tablet or mobile device. Google then provided a test site for assessing the mobile readiness of Web pages/sites at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly With an eye towards checking the baseline readiness of California Community College library web sites for mobile users, each CCC library website was opened from the cclccc.org directory web page at: http://cclccc.org/directory.php and the URL was then checked at the Google test site. Of the 113 libraries and the CCL and CCCCO websites only  27 libraries received the following instant response:             “Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly.” The response is accompanied by an image of the Web site as it would / does appear on a mobile device. The remaining 85 library Web sites received one of the following reports:

1. Page appears not mobile-friendly

Text too small to read Links too close together Mobile viewport not set Content wider than screen

1. Failed to fetch the requested URL
2. Requested URL is disallowed by robots.txt

  Here are the library Web pages which were mobile-friendly on April 21 2015  

  In the spirit of full disclosure, as the Web editor for the CCLCCC.ORG website, our own organization site is NOT yet mobile-friendly.