Last year two important major announcements made by Google in February 2015 blog post were:
- Starting April 21 2015, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, meaning more mobile-friendly sites in search results.
- We will begin to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed
Focusing on the point that Getting good, relevant answers when you search shouldn’t depend on what device you’re using, Google has announced that, “Beginning of May 2016, we’ll start rolling out an update to mobile search results that increases the effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.”
Google recommends checking out the Mobile-Friendly Test and the Webmaster Mobile Guide, both of which provide guidance on how to improve your mobile site.
If you've already made your site mobile-friendly, you will not be impacted by this update. The blog post also mentions that the intent of the search query is still a very strong signal and if the content of the page is very superior and in-depth related to the search query then a page which is not mobile-friendly, may rank in the search results.
