Just over a month ago, Google amended its search algorithms to favour those sites that are mobile-friendly. In short, the idea seems to have been to give optimised and responsive mobile sites greater prominence in results. It was dubbed “mobilegeddon” and could have been a real problem for SMEs because many don’t have mobile optimised websites.
Matthew Ogborne of UnderstandingE.com detailed the changes on Tamebay.
But it seems that many of the worst fears about this Google change have not been realised. And as this interesting article from Search Engine Land says “Little, if anything, happened..”
For many SMEs, upgrading a website or ecommerce store so it has all the bells and whistles it needs to be truly considered mobile-friendly can be a prohibitive expense. And, of course, whilst Google does want to enhance the search experience it isn’t in the business of unduly penalising perfectly good sites that searchers want to find.
What has your experience, a month on, of the Google changes been?
2 Responses
“Little, if anything, happened..” – even if Google haven’t culled your website from their mobile SERPs – that’s exactly what will happen with your conversions if you do not optimise for the mobile environment. That should be a big enough incentive by itself.
I imagine “Little, if anything, happened” because very few small businesses actually have good responsive design in place on their website. As someone who cares about the issue at least enough to give it some priority, I’ll admit that I don’t have a responsive site right now, although working on it.
https://yoast.com/mobilegeddon-has-come/
The loss is big for the big names, therefore the potential gain should be big for early adopters.