SEO

Mobilegeddon: The Impacts of the Google Mobile Update

Exactly a week ago, Google started rolling out the mobile-friendly algorithm. After one week we can already see some impacts of Mobilegeddon.

Winners and Losers

Even though the algorithm update is not fully rolled out yet, Searchmetrics published a first evaluation of the winners and losers on Friday. This data is constantly being updated. These are the top 10 winners and losers in the target market Germany based on current data from the Searchmetrics Suite (as of 26.4.2015):
(Data for Switzerland is not yet available).

Winners

Mobilegeddon: The Top 10 Winners Germany

Losers

Mobilegeddon: The Top 10 Losers Germany

All the top 10 winners have the Google mobile-friendly label. Some of the losers, however, also have a website that is optimized for mobile devices (e.g. huffingtonpost.de). We discovered that the home pages of these websites pass the mobile-friendly test, but not all of their content pages.

It is important to evaluate for each individual case whether the change was caused by the algorithm update or by other factors.

Search Engine Results Desktop vs Mobile

Data from seoClarity also confirm that Mobilegeddon is here. The graphic below shows that the search results on mobile differ more and more from the desktop search results. 

Mobilegeddon: Increasing differences between mobile and desktop search results

Monitor Your Website

Keep an eye on your data and monitor the impact of Mobilegeddon on your website. Ideally you use an SEO tool like Searchmetrics to do this. The search queries report in Google Webmaster Tools and the mobile report in Google Analytics (Audience > Mobile) also provide useful insights. 

Google published several useful videos on how to make your webseite mobile-friendly during their #MobileMadness campaign in March. You can find all these videos in the latest post of the Gooogle Webmaster Central Blog. 

 

Do you have questions about the visibility of your website in mobile search? Feel free to contact me!

 

(Update 4.5.2015: The Google mobile friendly algorithm has fully rolled out, but reindexing takes some more time.)