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Is Google warning mobiles users away from your website?
Regardless of your love or otherwise for the search giant Google, there is no doubt about their influence and reach. One of their long standing SEO recommendations is to focus your website on your customers’ needs rather than implement tactics designed specifically for search engine success. (“Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.” Google Webmaster Guidelines)
Google is running an ongoing experiment on how to highlight search results that are not mobile friendly. They are no longer eliminating a site from search results when the search is performed on a mobile device because of a perceived failure. Instead they are issuing a warning in the search results. (See this post from Google’s Webmaster Blog - Promoting modern websites for modern devices in Google search results)
This once again raises questions about your mobile strategy - are you ready? do you have a dedicated mobile site or a responsive design? Have Google called you out by showing a mobile unfriendly mark against you in the search results?
How will you know if your search volume is down as a result of Google’s assessment of your mobile readiness? You won’t. What we do know is that the volumes of searches performed on mobile devices is growing. Many industry commentators are expecting during 2014/2015 the volume of searches on mobile platforms will exceed 50% of the total searches performed. Some think it has already happened. Adoption rates will vary with market segments, demographics of likely searchers and availability of mobile infrastructure, but the upward trend is inevitable.
Do you know how many searchers arrive at your website on a mobile device? Several of the websites I manage are already above 40% of total traffic from mobile devices. Even if your rates are at this level or higher doesn’t mean you are protected from filtering by the search engine.
Related articles:
- How does your website look on a mobile phone? Have you checked? (blog.midboh.com.au)
- Going mobile - one step at a time (part 1: struggles with external files) (blog.midboh.com.au)
- Going mobile - one step at a time (part 2: the trouble with forms) (blog.midboh.com.au)
- Going mobile - one step at a time (part 3: Flash rears it’s ugly head) (blog.midboh.com.au)
- Going mobile - one step at a time (part 4: Turn down the volume) (blog.midboh.com.au)
- Going mobile one step at a time (part 5: Show your phone number somewhere obvious) (blog.midboh.com.au)