Unless you have been living in a cave for the past couple of months you will be fully aware that Google made a significant change to it’s ranking algorithm on the 21st April. The change was based on a websites ability to render correctly on a smart phone or other mobile device and was subtly nicknamed Mobilegeddon. Although there seemed to be very little impact on rankings initially we are starting to see sites fall foul of the new algorithm and drift down the page for important searches.
None of our customers have seen a negative impact on their positioning as a result of the changes and to the contrary some are even benefiting from the competition not being mobile friendly. We have seen some of our recent web design projects for businesses in Blackburn and Darwen shoot up the rankings quicker than expected, purely on the basis that many of the competitor sites were non responsive.
Mobilegeddon by the Numbers
- There was an overall decrease in the number of non-mobile-friendly websites in the first three search engine results pages (SERPs) of 21 percent.
- There was a decrease of 17.3 percent in non-mobile-friendly sites on the first page of search results.
- Non-mobile-friendly sites decreased by 20.7 percent and 25.2 percent on pages two and three of search results.
- What you need to know: websites that do not pass the “mobile-friendly” test are dropping fast out of the first three pages of search results.
Before the update, Google was already taking mobile responsiveness into account as a ranking factor. This update was said to only impact mobile searches, but you can bet that all searches are being affected in some way, or will be soon
As the web continues to be viewed and consumed on all kinds and sizes of devices, web development companies and webmasters will need to keep up with mobile web trends to ensure their websites can be viewed on multiple platforms.
