Today is the day that Google rolls out its mobile update across the UK. This important update will expand the use of mobile friendliness as a ranking signal in the mobile search results. In other words, sites which are not deemed mobile friendly, could see their mobile rankings, and hence mobile traffic, drop.
What has been confirmed so far?
So far the following has been confirmed by Google:
•The algorithm update will start on April 21st and will take a few days to a week to roll-out completely and globally.
•Webpages are either mobile friendly or not, there are no degrees of mobile friendliness in this algorithm.
•Google has said that it will affect more search queries than Panda or Penguin.
•Google is treating this as a big deal, more so than we have seen for pretty much any update in recent times.
How big is the update and what could the impact be?
The update means that pages which are not mobile friendly, will not rank as well in mobile search results for non-branded search terms compared to their desktop rankings. Pages that are mobile friendly, will do better, pushing the pages that are mobile unfriendly further down the SERPS.
Googles was quoted saying that the mobile friendly ranking algorithm will have more of an impact on Google’s search results than previous large updates. And with an average of over 50% of all traffic to websites coming from mobile devices, we are treating this as a big deal.
How can i monitor performance from mobile?
In order to evaluate and understand the impact of this update it is vital that you track both mobile traffic and mobile rankings. There are many different ways of achieving this dependant on the tracking software of the website.
Even without tracking, we are able to provide an estimated top line view of how mobile traffic has been affected. The tools we use, have been tracking mobile visibility for six weeks, and below is an example of mobile vs desktop traffic on moneysupermarket.com.
How can you test if your site is mobile friendly?
To test whether your site is mobile friendly, Google has provided the following tools:
•The fastest way to see if your web pages are mobile friendly, is to see if you have the mobile friendly label in the live mobile search results now.
•To test whether your pages are mobile friendly, you can use the mobile friendly testing tool which should match the live Google search results.
•You can use Webmaster Tools to get a full list of mobile usability issues across a verified site using the Mobile Usability Report.
Conclusion
With mobile traffic for most sites currently between 40% and 60% and growing, it is vital that your sites are mobile friendly. Is your site ready for the mobile revolution?