As if we needed further proof that the PC is dying and mobile is king, Google has announced that it receives more online searches from mobile users than PC users in ten countries, including Japan and the United States. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that the company has started to prioritize mobile-friendly websites in its search results for users who are on mobile devices.
It’s no secret that we’re glued to our mobile devices. But what are we doing on them? Searching Google, for one thing. The company today confirmed that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the U.S. and Japan,” according to Google’s internal data. The company did not elaborate or list the other eight countries. The blog post used to make the announcement largely focused on how Google’s AdWords clients can capitalize on the ongoing shift to mobile. (Increased mobile searches are a “tremendous opportunity for marketers,” according to Google.) But it comes shortly after the so-called “Mobilegeddon,” when Google started giving mobile-friendly sites priority in search results on smartphones or tablets. Websites not currently optimized for variously sized mobile devices are buried under an avalanche of results, while mobile-friendly sites rocket to the top. “When it comes to search on mobile devices, users should get the most relevant and timely results, no matter if the information lives on mobile-friendly Web pages or apps,” Google said in a February blog post announcing plans for the April switch.