We so loved the title “mobilegeddon” that we were hoping it would come around again for another mention and yes, it has!
It was one of the main SEO stories we remember from 2015 and you may think back to postings from us such as (https://www.weareinfront.com/mobile-friendly-ranking-launch/) when there was a flurry of activity and interest about this topic.
As you may have read from the above article, we predicted and explained that the process would not happen on a single day, but may take a week (or some time anyway) to implement.
So one year on what has happened?…
Well surprisingly after all the hype the answer is not a lot – yet anyway!
After April 2015 had passed, many people monitored the changes to see what influence the mobile friendly algorithm had, and some completed extensive and comprehensive research. It was eventually concluded that the changes were quite limited and seemed to affect the SERPs much less than was previously thought (or in many peoples cases feared!)
One argument for the above is that many companies actually had taken notice of the advice and made changes to avoid penalties occurring. This probably makes sense. The websites most likely to be affected by a change like this are those popular and well known ones we are all aware of, so they have the real need to comply for their own sake (or risk getting left behind.) Bear in mind though that this argument could apply to anyone!
It seems that Google has been generous thus far and that mobilegeddon was ‘cool’ at its hottest point. Forget that now though, as 2016 is bringing a new phase to this project. If we were faced with mobilegeddon before we are heading towards supermobgeddon now!
Google has announced that from May 2016 it is going to place more weight on mobile friendliness as a ranking signal. A report has been issued and can be viewed https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/03/continuing-to-make-web-more-mobile.html for more information.
The clever thing about this is that no one can complain because webmasters should have done and dusted this process 12 months ago. If you believe that the 2015 version of this change was ‘cool’ at best, it brings about questions like ‘what was the purpose’ or ‘what was the objective’ of it, and quite a few people would be puzzled by the misleading nature of the historical context to this case.
The odd thing about Google’s announcement is that it goes onto say that even if your website is not mobile friendly it can still rank well, as long as good quality content is present. It stops short of explaining what ‘ranking well’ is however – does this mean the second page???
If anything this adds more uncertainty and confusion. Google seems to be rebutting what their announcement is saying! It also implies that more changes or refinement must occur in the future aswell.
What do you think? Judging by this, we might see mobilegeddon appearing again rather than it being dealt with once and for all!
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