Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Google to Make Websites Faster for Free


Watch out, your site is about to be transcoded by Google on slow mobile devices.

According to a post on Bruce Clay's blog by John Alexander, Google is going to make slow and non-mobile friendly sites to be fast and friendly with its new transcoder. The transcoder makes a much better user-experience for those on a slow mobile connection. Is this a good thing?

You can decide for yourself by checking out the Google transcoder page to see how your site renders when transcoded.

How to view your transcoded website:
1. First go to Google transcoder site.
2. Type in the URL for your site and hit preview.
3. Scan the QR code with your smart phone.
4. Voila, you will see how your site looks once transcoded to the mobile user.

You can also use the method outlined in the Bruce Clay post (cited at top of this post) to render your website on your computer screen.

A couple of worries I have about the transcoder are:
  • Will website owners be less motivated to make their web designs faster and mobile-friendly on their own?
  • Will some sites not work well with a Google bot optimizing them?  (I tried one of my client sites and it looks not so great.)
If you've taken great pains to make your mobile site look really good on mobile devices, you may not like Google's speeded up version.

If you want help making your site search engine friendly check out Ducktoes Seo Services in Calgary.