The Google Mobilegeddon Update – What You Need to Know

Recently Google implemented another update to their already extensive algorithms and true to form, it has everyone from webmasters to business professionals in a panic. What do these latest changes mean and why are people calling it ‘Mobilegeddon?’ Actually, the Google Mobilegeddon update is pretty straightforward and not a reason to panic – just yet! There are a few things you need to know so that you can take steps to make any alterations to your website if you feel it will be impacted by Mobilegeddon. Here are some of questions people are asking.

What Sites Will Be Impacted by Mobilegeddon?

The buzz going around the internet is that not all sites will be impacted by Mobilegeddon and this is, for the most part, true. What Google hopes to accomplish is to make the user experience (UE) more meaningful to those searching through their mobile phones. Since more than 75% of all searches are conducted through mobile phones, Google understood that those sites not optimised for mobile phones were a real disappointment to mobile users. Consequently, they systematically went about instituting changes to be beneficial to mobile searches.

The answer to the question is twofold. First, if you are already optimised for a mobile-friendly UE, then your impact will be positive as your site will come up in the mobile searches. Any sites that have not optimised at least a few pages will be ignored by the search giant. Which brings us to the second part of that answer – if you have pages which are optimised then your entire site won’t be penalised and those pages that are mobile friendly will show in mobile searches.

Am I Too Late to Make Changes?

Since the highly advertised changes were set to be instituted on 21 April, many people believe they have missed the boat. Actually, this is not necessarily true and there is still time to begin updating your site if you feel that you are deriving a lot of traffic from mobile searches. Also, you may not need to make changes to some of your pages if you find that searches are in terms of brand.

Google is not going to penalise mobile searchers by denying them access to ‘brands’ they are searching for, so if the majority of your traffic is from brand as opposed to organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page., you may need only make changes to pages that see organic traffic. The short answer to that question is, yes there is still time to make changes but remember, you won’t see mobile results until the crawlers find your mobile changes.

Will My Entire Site Be Penalised?

Much of the answer to this was dealt with above, but since it is one of the most commonly asked questions in regards to those dreaded updates, it deserves a bit of extra attention. The short answer here is that if you have some pages that are optimised for the mobile experience then they will show up in the mobile SERPs. However, any pages that are not optimised will simply be ignored. Now what does this mean in terms of traffic?

If you have pages within your site that are of vital importance to your market, then make absolutely sure they are optimised for a mobile-friendly UE. Some pages can be set aside for a later date if they don’t have a significant impact on your bottom line. For example, some businesses haven’t yet optimised their ‘About Us’ page but have taken the time to update Services and Contact information.

The bottom line is that if you want to get found on mobile searches in terms of organic traffic, you need to make those changes ASAP. If you are not affected much by organic mobile searches then you can go about those changes at a slower pace. The only searches that will be impacted are organic mobile searches and that’s what you need to know.