Optimizing Websites for Google TV : Is it Necessary?

A recent blog post on Google Official Blog suggested webmasters to optimize their website for Google TV. For those who don’t know what Google TV is, it’s a full featured television set connected to internet with a built-in web browser (Google Chrome).

The question is, is it necessary to optimize a website for television separately? Or just the normal optimizations will be enough? Well, Google doesn’t think so. They have suggested a few things to optimize a website for Google TV. They are calling it “10-Foot UI”.

1. Larger Texts: For easy reading from 10 feet distance
2. Easy Navigation: To navigate using remote control’s D-Pad rather than touchpad/mouse
3. Highlighted Selection: When someone select something (Like a link or a tab in your webpage), it should be clearly visible from 10 feet distance.
4. High Resolution Compatibility: Since the Google TV is Full HD with 1080p, the webpage should also be compatible with that high resolution
5. And a few others in Google TV Website Optimization Guide

The noticeable thing is that they haven’t suggested anything to rank better in Google TV Web Search. So, we can assume that the Google TV Web Search will use the existing datacenters and algorithms.

Google TV comes with Google Chrome Web Browser and all the sites that are compatible with it should function properly in Google TV too. Also, Google TV supports Flash 10.1 and higher making it compatible for video sharing sites too.

All that you need is to rank higher in normal Google SERP to perform well in Google TV too.

Here is a short introductory video for Google TV from Google