Google's Test My Site tool measures speed and 'mobile friendliness'

Google launched a mobile website-testing tool in its latest effort to improve the user experience on the wireless web.

The company introduced Test My Site, an online destination that enables users to type in a homepage URL to receive scores for "mobile friendliness," mobile speed and desktop speed. The service also provides reports on how well sites adapt to mobile including whether content and navigation buttons are sized for mobile screens as well as information on browser caching and support for compression. And it offers guidance regarding how well sites avoid plugins and app-install interstitials that hide content.

The new offering was produced by Think With Google, a division of the company aimed at helping companies optimize their online presence to attract, convert and retain customers.

The effort hopes to address a long-standing gap between ever-increasing traffic on the mobile web and a lack of mobile-optimized business websites. Morgan Stanley reported last fall that mobile browser traffic is twice as large (pdf) as app traffic, growing 1.2 times faster than app usage. And a study by Accenture released earlier this year found that the number of mobile shoppers grew from 36 percent in 2014 to 40 percent in 2015.

But research from RBC Capital Markets last fall indicated only 33 percent of small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S. had a mobile-optimized website, as eMarketer reported.

The new service is the latest in Google's ongoing effort to create a more mobile-friendly web. Last year it began labeling sites that were mobile-friendly in its search results, helping users avoid pages that didn't render well on their phones. And it has begun rolling out updates to mobile search results that increase "the effect of the ranking signal" to further emphasize pages that are both relevant and mobile-friendly.

For more:
- see Google's mobile-testing site

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