Be Mobile optimized or face ‘Mobilegeddon’ on April 21st, 2015

by Guna Nadar - 4/7/2015 3971 Views

Not Yet Mobile Friendly? Be ready to face 'Mobilegeddon' this April

It is not now that Google has been stressing on mobile friendliness of websites. Responsiveness leads to a better search result, allowing end users to make the most of their time spent on the internet. While most modern consumers use mobile devices for web search, there are still several businesses that haven’t cared to adapt to this big change. As of April 21^st, Google is going to penalize these websites by ranking them far down in the SERP list for anyone to find. This is not just a loss of credibility but can highly affect traffic and revenue generation standards.

Websites that are already mobile friendly are currently attached with a mobile optimized green tag. For internet surfers on smart devices, this has been a way since last August to identify and work on platforms that are the more permissible and clear. Websites that are not optimized for mobile devices are quite difficult to browse on smaller devices and users find a lot of trouble with forms and clicks. Consequently, users are bound to look for competing websites that provided the same services/information with better usability. However, after April 21^st, everything that pops up would be mobile friendly and users don’t have to spend time searching for the one that makes their access easy.

Mobile Search Trends

As of today, more than 60% of web searches on the Google search engine are made from mobile devices. Consequently, it does make sense for the IT giant to invest in favor of its user’s majority. Mobile search is only going to increase every year as consumers today are more inclined towards convenience and mobility.

The changes will not only be limited to websites. Google is already in the process of rolling out labels for indexed apps, based on the information provided by registered users. This too can have a major impact on the SERPs. A wild guess is that future search results will also focus on mobile tools and apps apart from website results. Also, businesses that cater to their mobile traffic will also be highly rewarded by Google.

Preparing for April 21^st 2015

Responsiveness is not an out-of-the-world concept. For most of us, it is just a responsive theme that can adjust its interface according to the dimensions of the access device and for others it is just a few more lines of code added to the script. However after the April 21^st update, you will need to ensure that:

The mobile version of your website is functional. Responsiveness is a popular way of catering to mobile users but you can also have a separate website that caters to this part of the crowd. Google shouldn’t have a problem as long as users are happy.
Your website attracts Google bots.
Check pages personally on mobile devices for better navigability. It’s not just about making your home page / landing page mobile friendly but the entire website altogether.

Scope of April 21^st update

Google has not yet come up with a name for the April 21^st update, but we are certain that the non- conforming websites will face “Mobilegeddon”. In the past, Google has made several changes in its search algorithms. Most of them were nothing more than tweaks and data refreshes that had less impact on search results. However, this new update is something more serious that Google has been working on. That’s one of the reasons why Google has made the announcement so early, months before the algorithms is implemented. According to Zineb Ait Bahajji, from the Google Webmaster Trends team, this update will be much more significant than the Panda or Penguin. One can expect the April update to be bigger in terms of the changes made to the search algorithms. Consequently, both consumers and businesses will see a huge change in the search engine platforms.

As of now it is clear that the April 21^st update speaks of mobile responsiveness, but after the release we can expect more surprises. Several new factors might get added to rank the mobile friendliness of websites apart from responsiveness. The websites that are not yet optimized for responsiveness will go out of business and disappear from the SERPs completely.

Category :

Google

Tags :

Mobilegeddon, Mobile Friendly, Mobile Responsivene

About Guna Nadar

Brief Info about Guna Nadar +

I mostly write technical aspects and not much into creative writing. For the past decade I worked along with top notch SEO & Internet Marketing professionals which naturally lured me into the world of Search Engines. When I am not writing I read from comics to philosophy.Antiques, Fishing, hunting are my passions. Currently I am working on Google Penalty protection and .... more info about the author