As we have already mentioned in a previous article, Google places a high value on the mobile-friendliness of your website. Since the end of 2014, there was a lot of speculation regarding when Google would release a mobile-friendly update. There is now finally a clear answer to this burning question.
The Google Webmaster blog has stated that the mobile-friendliness of your website will be a ranking signal starting no later than April 21st. That means that Google's mobile results will favor websites that are more easily accessed and suitable for mobile devices. This change will affect all mobile search results in all languages worldwide.
For end-users, that means that there will be even more valuable results on the results page and faster loading speeds. For website owners, it is now really important to optimize your website for mobile devices if you haven't already done so. It is no longer necessary to consider if this is necessary or not, you should optimize your website for mobile devices.
An interesting bit of evidence regarding the role having a mobile-friendly website will play was posted on Google+ by the Indian SEO expert, Neeraj Kayastha. You can easily see in the screenshots that Google is alerting users that the website will load slowly via the red warnings. This will have the effect of raising awareness of how accessible a website will be to a mobile user and therefore unconsciously affect their clicking behavior.