Google Mobilegeddon! Is it that bad?
Google is set to change its Search Engine Algorithm on 21st April 2015 putting more emphasis on the need for websites to be mobile friendly.
You may have read online that your standard, non-mobile/responsive website will be penalised as a result. This is partially true, however, many articles (such as this one from the BBC) do not emphasise the following critical piece of information… The change only affects searches made on mobile devices ranking mobile friendly sites higher up in the results than non-mobile friendly sites on mobile devices. The key point here is ‘searches made on mobile devices‘. Searches made on a computer and also a tablet such as an iPad will not be affected, your website will continue to appear in its natural/current position.
The reason I said ‘partially true’ at the start of this article is because mobile search is becoming more and more popular, you may find that you already receive a large proportion of your search engine traffic from mobile searches, so yes, if this is the case and your website is not mobile friendly, then your traffic will almost certainly drop off after 21st April.
If you don’t know if your website is currently mobile friendly, Google have kindly provided an online tool which can be found here.
If you want to know how much traffic you get from mobile search, you should be able find this out using your site traffic statistics tool such as Google Analytics.
As mobile search is becoming more and more popular it’s a good idea to consider having a responsive/mobile site. Contact us to find out how we can help.
