21 Apr Google’s Mobilegeddon Is Here!
Last month Google announced a big algorithm change in their mobile search starting on April 21. Well, that day is here.
So what’s it mean for webmasters?
– Google will favor sites with “mobile friendly” pages on their mobile search only. If you are not mobile friendly, you will not be eliminated from the rankings, but you might find yourself pushed down.
– It’s a page-by-page change, not site-wide. So any pages that are mobile friendly should rank, but those that are not mobile friendly won’t sink your entire site.
– If you have a custom site, it could be a complicated to re-design for mobile, but for sites built on popular publishing platforms like WordPress and Drupal, it could be done rather quickly by updating to a one of the many “responsive” themes.
– If you haven’t updated your sites yet, you can do so at any time and Google will re-crawl and re-evaluate on an ongoing basis. So you can always see what happens, the make the change.
Question is, do you need to make the change? If a large percentage of your traffic is from mobile, then probably. If only a few percentage points are from mobile, then maybe not.
And just what defines mobile? According to Google it’s smartphones and not tablets or iPads.
A few more points to make:
– Viewing websites on a mobile device was an issue a few years ago, but thanks to larger screens for me it’s been fine, so is Google a little late on this? I believe so.
– With many websites going “responsive” (infinite scroll, menu buttons, big fonts), is the browsing experience getting worse for desktops? Yes, it is. Maybe Google will one day require “desktop friendly” sites!
– Again, are we building websites for our users or to keep Google happy?
– When browsing the web on mobile, how often do you prefer the mobile version over the standard full site. I often prefer the full site.
To help with the transition, Google created this page here.
No Comments