There has been a lot of talk about Mobilegeddon; the term attached to Google’s latest update. It’s been almost a month – what has changed?
On April 21, 2015 Google began rolling out its’ latest algorithm aimed to give more precedence to mobile-friendly websites. Has your website been affected by this change? Good question. Chances are you may not know. Here are some facts that might help clear things up.
- The update does not affect desktop or tablet rankings. It only affects searches from mobile devices (smartphones).
- If you’re not sure your site is mobile-friendly in Google’s eyes, use their Mobile Friendly Test.
- If your site is not mobile friendly but you’re working to make it mobile friendly, there’s good news. Google will determine if your site is mobile friendly every time it crawls the site. For quicker action submit a xml sitemap or go to Google Webmaster Tools and use the Fetch As Google with Submit to Index option.
If you perform a search on your desktop or tablet you won’t notice a change. But if you perform the same search on your smartphone, you’ll see the mobile friendly designation. Here’s a screenshot from my iPhone showing the results of a search for dogs.
You’ll notice that the second search result is not mobile friendly. That website has high enough quality content that it still is able to rank high despite not being mobile friendly.
Mobilegeddon?
The recent update is not the disaster it was initially thought to be. Not yet…
If your site is not mobile friendly, don’t panic. Your search rankings are not going to vanish. You might not rank as high as you did before the update on mobile searches but if you take steps to update your site you can quickly recover any loss in search ranking. Think mobile search isn’t important? ?According to NewsText.com, This year, the number of mobile devices that are actually in use is expected to surpass the number of people on earth with 7.7 billion mobile phones and tablets compared to 7.1 billion people. With 1.8 million smart phones being sold every day, it’s abundantly clear what direction we’re heading when it comes to accessing content on the web.? Need more convincing? How about this statistic? 140,000,000 mobile searches every day!
Mobile search does matter. Google’s latest update is an example of how much value they place on mobile and what the future holds for not only search but our digital experience.
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Hello, I'm Chuck Hersey, a co-founder of Team 218 Web Services. With over 20 years of experience in web development and SEO, I've helped numerous small businesses and nonprofits establish a strong online presence through effective, high-quality websites. Since starting Team 218 in 2014, my goal has been simple: to provide Iowa businesses and nonprofits with comprehensive, affordable website solutions that are easy to manage and designed to help them grow.
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