Though it may sound enticing to some, “Mobilegeddon” is not the sudden annihilation of all mobile devices. Rather, Google is releasing a new search algorithm that will impact how mobile users find websites. For those of you who aren’t up on your search engine technology, Google uses a complex, closely-guarded formula to calculate its search result rankings for all the websites it indexes. The last major update to the algorithm, entitled “Panda“, was released in 2011, and was designed to reduce the impact of gaming search engine ranking through content manipulation, a specialty of many less-than-honest SEO companies that sprang into existence in the last decade. Panda impacted about 12% of existing websites, most of them content farms designed to leverage popular content and other nefarious SEO methods to get to the top of search results.
What this means for you:
This time around, Google is focusing on providing better results for smartphone users by favoring mobile-friendly websites over those that display poorly on small screens. If you don’t drive business through your website, this may not be a high priority for you, but it may surprise you to know that over half of all internet traffic is from mobile devices, and nearly 40% of search is done on smartphones. Having a website is essentially a must-have for any ongoing business or organization, and if your website makes a poor showing to over half of your visitors, it will have an impact on your brand. How do you know if your website is ready for Mobilegeddon? You can punch in your URL to a website developed by Google to determine whether your website is mobile-friendly. Unlike Google’s last algorithm change, this one should start impacting rankings as soon as 72 hours from launch. Lest you think you are the only one caught out in the cold with this change, there are several internationally recognized brands whose sites do not pass Google’s mobile “sniff test.” One advantage you may have over corporate behemoths: less red tape and meetings will be necessary to make the required changes to your website, also you happen to know someone who can provide strategic advice in this area as well as assist in the website redesign. Give us a call if you need to “mobilize” your website!
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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