With all the recent hype and hysteria surrounding the Google announcement that they would be expanding their mobile ranking algorithm on April 21, 2015, we felt it important to address the issue without fear mongering. The new mobile-friendly algorithm has recently been inaccurately dubbed mobilegeddon and mobileacalypse. Webmasters and business owners are freaking out about this date as if it is the end of their non mobile-friendly website showing up in search results when this is just not the case. Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller commented on the uproar Tuesday, April 12, 2014:
“It’s great to get people motivated to make their website mobile-friendly, but we’re not going to be removing sites from search just because they’re not mobile-friendly. You can test your pages & reach our documentation (including some simple tweaks that might work for your CMS too) at http://g.co/mobilefriendly I’m looking forward to more awesome mobile-friendly sites, and savvy SEOs & webmasters to help more sites get there in the future.”
The truth is that April 21st is not a cutoff date, but rather the beginning of an expansion in the way Google ranks search results done from smart phones. This means that it will not affect search results done on tablets, laptops and desktops. Nonetheless it is important to think about optimizing your website for smart phones because in 2014 mobile internet traffic surpassed desktop internet traffic. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly right now, don’t get upset or give up hope because this is not the end. There’s no rush, but think about getting your website optimized for smart phones sooner rather than later as they are continuing to garner more internet traffic.
West Press has been promoting responsive web design, Google’s top recommended method of a mobile-friendly website, for years and this is a standard part of any website we build. For more information, read our blog post about responsive web design and its inherent benefits. We highly encourage people who do not have responsive websites to start thinking about updating their website to keep up with the mobile market.
The web development team at West Press is here to help if you would like to have a responsive, mobile-friendly website. Contact West Press or your Account Executive at 520-624-4939 today.