On April 21st Google introduced its much anticipated mobile update. The mobile update was designed to reshape Google’s results page; favouring websites that had converted to a mobile-friendly format. Google informed us of their intentions back in February – to give us all time to prepare ourselves and our sites for this game changing update. The countdown had begun and we scrambled to make our preparations in time for this final reckoning.
So, what does our reshaped SERP environment look like?
Two days on and the ash cloud is beginning to clear – as we step out from our shelters; dazed and confused, to survey the new, queer landscape that Google’s results page has become. Strangely enough, however, after all the hysteria, this new world does not seem as alien as one might have expected.
On the face of it, it doesn’t seem like the mobile-friendliness of a site is as significant a ranking factor as was first anticipated. No sites are reporting any major falls and there hasn’t been any huge difference in sites’ rankings on desktop searches when compared to mobile SERPs. All-in-all the first two days of this apocalyptic event have been relatively quiet.
Does this mean it was all a lot of hype over nothing?
Whilst this may be starting to look like December 22 2012, as we all breathed a heavy sigh of relief when we awoke to realise that the Mayans’ predictions hadn’t come true, it is unlikely that we have yet seen the full repercussions that this update will have.
One thing that we can say for certain is that Google have made their intentions clear. Whilst their stance on the mobile-friendliness of websites has been known for some time, this is by far the biggest step they have made towards making it a significant ranking factor.
Things are certainly moving in one direction and it is unlikely that this will change anytime soon.
Are Google the biggest winners here?
Google has certainly achieved one thing with this update, they convinced a lot of us to change our websites so that they were mobile-friendly. This could well have been their plan all along.
Since Google originally announced that this update was going to happen around 4.7% of webmasters have switched their sites to a mobile-friendly design – according to their own figures. This certainly represents a victory for Google’s mobile-friendly philosophy if nothing else.
This would also explain why Google chose to inform us all of this change so far in advance.
Google seldom give us a forewarning of such large changes to their algorithm, so why this time?
Should we choose to believe that they honestly wanted to give us all time to adapt, to make sure we weren’t all caught on our heels? – How nice of them.
Or should we believe that, as with many threatened Doomsday’s, the action caused by the fear of extinction was the largest effect of the whole process?
One thing is for sure, Google won’t be unhappy that we all scrambled to dance to their tune.
Courtesy of: jseo.com
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