Google: Don't Use Hover Menus On Mobile Friendly Sites

Oct 21, 2014 - 8:37 am 8 — by

Google Mobile UXAs you may remember, Google is laying hints that mobile UX is coming as a ranking factor. That being the case, Googlers are now talking a lot about mobile UX (user experience) issues they see often, which I suspect might be baked into the algorithm they may or may not be working on.

Gary Illyes from Google posted on Google+ this morning that mobile-friendly web sites should never use menu hovers. He said:

If you create a mobile friendly site, please check that you don't have menus that require hovering. I don't know how to do that on a mobile.

A few Googlers reshared the post but Pierre Far from Google added a bit more, saying "a way to avoid this is to use both :hover and :active CSS pseudo selectors."

So when designing your new mobile friendly web site, please consider these Google comments.

I wouldn't be surprised if we hear news on a new ranking signal around mobile in early 2015.

Forum discussion at Google+.

 

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