Thursday, April 16, 2015

Will Google's mobile friendly change on the 21/4 affect your presence on the internet?

There is no doubt if you're getting business from the internet, which is a result of Google searches, then anything Google does will affect you.

On the 21/4/15 Google is rolling out an update which will see search results on mobile devices affected. How much is hard to say. What I suggest to clients is to review their data. For example in my own case one site has less than 10% of traffic from mobile, so to lose traffic wouldn't be a big deal. Another site has around 40% of traffic from mobile so at first it would appear to be a big deal. However to complicate things the second site is a web app and generates a small income based on ads. When I updated the site to be mobile friendly the income went down 80-90%. Mobile income for the site is around 20%. So even though it may at first appear logical to make the site mobile friendly, it doesn't make sense financially.

What this means is you really do need to review your own information and base your decision on what you're doing. Even perform some tests.

In general however keep in mind that whilst the change is purported to be providing better search results for mobile users, ultimately Google will have their own financial reasons for making the changes. Reading the article on the Moz site alludes to some of those reasons. It states that in time making your mobile site mobile friendly may result in a higher ranking, but because of Google's own services the income from traffic may reduce. To see this effect now on the desktop, type in "movies" into Google search. First you get the ads and then you get Google's own version of information for movies. If you click on Google's movie information you get movie information (locations, times, trailers) without ever leaving Google. Now the presentation is basic, but still it means you stay in Google and that helps Google and people don't leave to go to the actual sites. In essence the Moz site is saying Google will display it's own information first and the organic sites will appear off the screen, which is also called below the fold, making it less likely to get traffic.

The following is a link to the Moz article. (http://moz.com/blog/9-things-about-googles-mobile-friendly-update) We have to keep in mind they don't have inside information and not everything stated will be correct.

For example there's an inference that if a site isn't mobile friendly it won't appear in the mobile search results. That's hard to believe but it may end up being true. I suspect Google will fudge the results so that high ranking sites still appear. For example the Bureau of Meteorology site is not currently mobile friendly. Let's see if that site disappears after 21/4. It may. Who really knows except Google.

I found three were also some interesting points in the Moz article I thought I'd share. We'll steer clear of the issues pertaining to Google's own interests as we can't affect those. Let's just focus on our interests as site owners.

1. There's a real concern and even possibility sites will simply disappear from mobile devices if they're not mobile friendly. That's possible. (I have a site I'll be testing before and after the change.)

2. If sites do disappear then that could mean if your site is mobile friendly you may go up in the ranking. Yahoo. But as others update their sites that advantage could be short lived. (I'll be testing a before an after to see if this is the case for one of my sites.)

3. There's a big push towards "responsive" websites by those creating websites. Keep in mind there's multiple ways to have a mobile friendly presence. There's a mention of the m. sub domain and in theory there's a couple of ways to let Google know you have an alternate mobile-friendly website.

4. Being classified as mobile friendly is supposedly quite quick. The real problem is if your site isn't crawled for a month, then Google won't know. There's a couple of ways to make this quicker.

5. At this stage this does not affect sites designed for the desktop and also supposedly tablets. Just mobile devices.

6. There may be different results for Android as compared to iOS users.

7. Part of the push appears to be to encourage app development on the Android platform and giving an improvement in ranking for Android app developers.

No matter what the change brings, what is important is to review your own situation. If traffic ceased tomorrow from mobile devices to your site how would that affect your business. Review your analytics data for your site and make a decision based on real facts and not a knee-jerk reaction that something needs to be done. In the near future there will be a lot of marketing by digital agencies/web developers telling you, you need a "responsive" site or mobile-friendly site. Using the data your site already provides you, will let you know better than anything or anyone else the best path forward.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.

No comments:

Post a Comment