Tag Archives: google mobile penalty april

The Google Mobile Penalty – Five Months On

Blog, Google Mobile Policy, Internet, , , , , ,

The Google mobile penalty for non-mobile optimized websites has now been in play for over five months and we’ve taken a look at what effects it has made in this time frame. As with any changes to Google’s algorithm, some online businesses have the chance to be absolutely destroyed by changes made by Google, but this time it’s something that businesses have active control over to avoid.

google mobile penalty review

What is the Google Mobile Penalty?

The Google mobile penalty is actually straight forward. Unlike other changes to Google’s search algorithm, this one is easy to understand and easy to adjust to.

Now that mobile has become such a prevalent area of online activity, Google are pushing for a more mobile friendly web experience. As a result, any websites with web pages that are not optimized for mobile viewing will be penalized in search results. On the other hand, websites that do have a good mobile optimized experience will get pushed past any results that don’t offer the same.

An important thing to realize, which a lot of website owners are unaware of, is that the Google mobile penalty will only apply to search results made from mobile devices. Desktop searches will remain the same.

fix mobile usability issues

The Effects of the Google Mobile Penalty Four Months on

The crazy thing about the Google mobile penalty is that it’s had a huge effect on websites across the entire globe. We’re not just talking small time websites either. A lot of top websites have had poor mobile website designs in the past and as a result this has caused them to fall off the Google search rankings.

There have been three main trends following the Google mobile penalty. Firstly, a large number of non-optimized websites have been effected quite severely. As a result, a lot of non-optimized mobile websites have lost out on lots of mobile traffic.

Following on from this, websites that have managed to create a mobile optimized experience have seen a slight boost in mobile traffic. The change isn’t huge, and it’s mostly dependant on how competitor’s in that niche are performing in terms of mobile optimization.

Finally, this update has pushed a lot of businesses to create mobile friendly experiences for their websites, which is exactly what Google wanted in the first place. It’s safe to say that the Google mobile penalty has mostly done good for the internet and mobile viewership.

google mobile penalty

 

The Google Mobile Penalty in the Near Future

The effects of the Google mobile penalty have pretty much already taken place. With that being said, any websites that now try to work on SEO will have drastically minimized results in terms of mobile site views if the website in question has poor mobile optimization.

We’re going to see a larger push for mobile websites now that the Google mobile penalty has been made active, but some businesses are still going to be reluctant to change, perhaps due to lack of SEO knowledge or budget issues. An SEO company can usually handle these problems for you.

google mobile algorithm

Hopefully in the future we’ll see more benefits for those that do implement mobile website optimization so that mobile experiences on the web can improve and businesses that support the mobile web can benefit from it.

Need help with your websites mobile website? Contact us today.

The Google Mobile Penalty – What to Expect On April 21, 2015

Blog, Google Mobile Policy, Internet, , , , ,

There’s no real way of knowing exactly what will happen with search rankings after a new Google update, but the upcoming Google mobile penalty is clearly going to have some drastic effects on non-mobile optimized web pages.

google mobile penalty

What is the Google Mobile Penalty?

Firstly, Google is set to make changes to the way it’s search engine ranks mobile optimized and non-mobile optimized websites on April 21st. At this point the whole internet could be a messy war zone. Fortunately, those who are keeping up with the times should not be affected. In fact, if you already have a mobile website you may even be affected positively by the upcoming Google update.

Here’s what Google has to say about their upcoming changes.

“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.”

This basically means that having a well optimized website for mobile devices is going to increase your search rankings. It’s no longer going to be all about content in 2015 – having a well performing website that runs on a multitude of devices is key to having your site rank higher in Google search results.

mobile search change

What to Expect

We should expect that the new Google mobile penalty will penalize those websites that still don’t support mobile devices properly. We aren’t just talking about owning a mobile version of your site. You will need to meet a certain set of criteria to ensure your website is as mobile friendly as possible and won’t be penalized as a result.

Information provided by Google themselves lists details about what Google will be looking for. While Google doesn’t blatantly say what Google Spider will be crawling for, it’s clear that they are looking for websites that offer certain features. Your mobile website should include readable text without any need to zoom. Your page should be resized to fit the device, so responsive web design would work wonders here.

Google has provided a guide listing some of the things you should take into consideration when designing a mobile website. They have also created a mobile-friendly test that can help you to determine whether your websites are mobile friendly or not.

mobile friendly test

If you do not have a mobile friendly website or a mobile website at all, you should expect to see a drastic change in your search engine ranking. We are not sure how much of an impact it will make, but when Google suggest that not having a mobile website will have a “significant impact” you should be prepared for the absolute destruction of your hard SEO work if you don’t own a mobile friendly website.

Our Suggestion

We really suggest looking at getting a mobile website done before the changes take place to avoid any penalties. We provide a mobile development service that can create you an optimized website that fits into the criteria needed to avoid the Google mobile penalty. You can learn more about our services and what Boost One Mobile is about here.

Click Here for a Mobile Preview