Background: Google announced in November, 2014, that it would be making changes to its search algorithms that would provide mobile-friendly web results to its users who are using Google with a mobile device. This is one of a series of articles that will explore the impact on the website of small businesses of that change.

To help users of Google search determine the contents of a page, Google encourages website publishers to use a well-structured URL (web page address). A good URL will provide searchers with a good hint to what they will find on the page — and also provide Google algorithms the same type of help. An example of what a page’s URL looks like when it explains what is on the page is the URL of this page: SallBusiness.com/tech/google-goes-away-from-url-on-mobile-search.

But as more-and-more people view websites on mobile devices, Google is breaking with the tradition of using the URL as the principle way it displays search results on smaller and smaller screens.

Google has started rolling out mobile-device results using the real-world names of the site displayed instead of the domain name.

And instead of the seeing the URL structure of the website’s address, it will be displayed in a breadcrumbs-like format. (A presentation that fits the page within a hierarchy like, SmallBusiness>Technology>Google.)

The changes are rolling out gradually and affect only mobile results, according to Google’s Bartlomiej Niechwiej and Rob Ennals. “The site name change is US-only for now and breadcrumbs are rolling out worldwide.”

For more information about Google’s roll-out of it’s new search algorithms for mobile devices, visit Search Engine Land.