Google has flexed its mobile muscles this week with two announcements regarding its mobile platform.
The company’s speed expert Ilya Grigorik announced via Google+ that mobile search has increased by 100-150 milliseconds, which equates to around 0.15 seconds.
Grigorik said that the company has used a technique called reactive prefetch to achieve faster search times.
Reactive prefetch involves Google preparing information for the user before they have clicked on the search result, which they achieve by calculating additional information about where the using is heading. Google then gathers this information and begins to prepare the destination page in advance, which can give the appearance of faster loading times.
Grigorik said: “here’s the trick: we also provide a hint to the browser indicating which other critical resources it should fetch in parallel to speed up rendering of the destination page.”
Apple users will have to wait to see the increase in speed for now though, as presently the technology is only on Google Chrome for Android.
Mobile-friendly labels go global
After launching in the UK on 18 November 2014, Google has now announced international availability of its mobile-friendly labels.
The labels give mobile users the ability to see if a website is optimised for mobile use from the Google search page. By this the inconvenience of clicking on a page on a mobile only to reach small text, or having to battle with screen rotation to make the page fit, is a problem of the past.
Google has encouraged users to get in contact with websites that haven’t achieved a mobile friendly label; and has asked those users to recommend Google’s mobile friendly test. The test indicates techniques for better mobile optimisation.
The search giant also offers a guide on how to build mobile friendly sites for those looking to cater for mobile audiences.
The mobile platform is ever more crucial for websites, as in the UK alone 77 per cent of all mobile phone holders are using a smartphone.