Google’s ‘Mobilegeddon’: What You Need to Know for April 2015
Google’s primary purpose is to help you find what you’re looking for. It’s a simple enough business model, and they’ve done a great job sticking to their bread and butter throughout their ascent to the goliath of the internet as well as the highest-trafficked website in the world. And now, with the proliferation of mobile devices as an everyday necessity for the average consumer comes the truth that most of the internet and all its applications are being accessed increasingly by mobile devices and tablets.
Smart phones are quickly becoming the most used devices in the world to access the web. Multitasking activities like listening to your favorite podcast or radio station on the go while reading emails and downloading a recipe for dinner simultaneously are capabilities that are afforded to us by our mobile devices. In North America alone, “mobile data traffic by 2019 will be equivalent to 210x the volume of North American mobile traffic ten years earlier (in 2009),” according to Cisco Communications. That’s why Google has announced that it will be unleashing its “mobile-friendly” update on April 21st, 2015, a.k.a – Mobilegeddon.
The name of the game here is mobile efficiency – and Google wants to reward the websites and apps that make the life of a mobile user easier by rewarding more mobile-friendly sites in search results. With this update, Google is tackling two inefficiencies they see with the current mobile user model. we’ll be covering there here so you can better prepare for Mobilegeddon.
Be Friendly, not Freaky
Google wants users who are accessing the web via their smart phones to be able to do so without worrying about load times or compatibility with their hand-held hardware. A lot of times, a website’s features, such as an embedded video, has to adjust to the phone’s smaller format. Or perhaps the website’s content requires Adobe Flash, but the phone isn’t equipped with it. This causes longer load time, and graphics to get ‘freaky’ via improperly loaded content.
With the new mobile-friendly search result update, Google is essentially telling websites that they need to make their websites less burdensome to the mobile user or else there will be a penalty in mobile-user access and search placement. As most users know, the higher a website ranks on Google the better traffic they will get because users usually don’t click beyond the first page of search results. In terms of Mobilegeddon, the quality of your website and how compatible it is to mobile users will affect your placement on Google’s search results. The first page is obviously the best placement, and beyond the third you’re really looking at low traffic results. So help yourself out and be friendly to those who want access to your content.
Is your website a ‘mobile freak’ or a ‘mobile friend?’ Check with Google’s Mobile-Friendly meter here:
*NOTE* This ‘mobile friendly’ checker works on a page to page basis. So if your website has multiple pages, make sure they are all checked. it’s a lot of work, but it will be worth it. Mobilegeddon is upon us – so get preparations in order.
“WHERE IS THE DA-oh. There it is…”
An index works like a hyper table of contents. When you need to know something quickly, you look up one or two reference words, search the index, find the page number, and continue with your reading. Google understands this and has taken steps to apply this to websites and the mobile landscape.
According to the Google announcement:
“We will begin to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed. As a result, we may now surface content from indexed apps more prominently in search. To find out how to implement App Indexing, which allows us to surface this information in search results, have a look at our step-by-step guide on the developer site.” – Google Web Master
In essence, the number of users who have your app installed and use it actively will be an influence in where you are ranked on the search engine. That’s just an influence though. If you website or service does not have an app, then make sure to make it mobile friendly!
The update takes place April 21st, 2015
Make sure you’ve checked your website’s mobile friendliness by then so that you don’t get flagged as “unfriendly” when the update takes place.
Don’t end up where you don’t belong because of an easy fix. Make sure you check your website with Lighthouse.
All won’t be lost if your webmaster or development team can’t make a page on your website mobile-friendly. There are just some pages that can’t “please all.” Google understands this, but in order to benefit the most from mobile search results, get your design teams working on optimizing your pages that aren’t converting to mobile very well. This time next year, you’ll see the value in starting now.
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