The dust settles – What did we learn from Mobilegeddon?
It’s been a few weeks now since Mobilegeddon – the term used to describe the latest Google mobile friendly update. As the dust settles we have been looking at the impacts of the changes and how it will affect our clients moving forward.
So what was it all about?
Google announced back in February that from 21st April they would be implementing a large change in the way that Google displays search results with the inclusion of mobile optimised webpages directly affecting mobile search rankings for the first time, creating quite a stir for many website owners.
What did that mean?
In simple terms this meant that webpages (not entire sites) that were optimised to be viewed on a smartphone or tablet would rank higher on mobile searches than pages that are not. This change DOES NOT affect desktop and laptop search results. Therefore if your mobile google served traffic audience was 15% and the remaining 85% was desktop only the 15% had the potential to be affected.
That’s not to say the 15% is not a significant chunk of traffic but a common misconception was all search traffic would be affected which is not the case.
What did we learn?
Well so far the main changes seem to be amongst larger high traffic websites that are fighting a daily SEO war. There have been some winners and losers but for most sites the changes did not indicate a major shift in organic search results. It also must be noted that there are 200 other ranking factors that make up the Google algorithm when ranking sites so although a major change there are factors to be considered as well when displaying search results.
But wait a minute…
Some smartphone and tablet friendly websites are now seeing some increased rankings over their competitors and the feeling amongst the website community is that this major update signals the intention for Google to introduce more mobile oriented changes in the coming months and years.
Mobilgeddon is a great opportunity for businesses to get ahead of the curve by making their websites Smartphone and Tablet compliant. According to ad network InMobi 60% of all internet traffic now originates from a mobile device therefore when considering optimising for mobile the question should no longer be one of if but when.
What can you do?
If you aren’t sure if your website is mobile friendly it’s easy to check by using Googles’ Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/. Analyse some of your pages by pasting in your website URLs and viewing the results. You can also use Google Webmaster tools usability report to isolate specific page problems.
If your website does not pass the test get in touch with us, optimising websites for mobile and tablet is what we do and we can advise you on the best way forward.
Sources
http://techcrunch.com/2015/0421/googles-mobile-friendly-update-could-impact-over-40-of-fortune-500/
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly-update.html