TRAFFIC
MOBILEGEDDON
CAME AND WENT…
NOW WHAT?
While Google’s recently introduced mobile algorithm barely moved search results, its long-run impacts
will turn out to be just as relentless and savage as Penguin’s, argues Nick Garner of 90 Digital, which
means webmasters should act now to future-proof their mobile SERPs.
MAYBE IT WAS bad PR management
Mobilegeddon
on Google’s part, or perhaps the SEO
community just wanted something to talk
about, but Mobilegeddon (the Google
mobile update) recently came and went,
leaving very little mess behind it.
We had thought mobile search results
would be turned upside down, but after one
month, only approximately 4 to 5 percent
of mobile results have changed.
Despite the non-drama of this update, it
should still be taken seriously, as although
search results weren’t initially affected
to any great degree, they form part of
Google’s strategy to implement slow, steady
and significant change over time in this
critical area of SEO.
By way of example, if you first thought
Penguin was a cute bird, now you know it’s
On 21 April 2015, Google made a short
announcement in their Webmaster
Central blog saying the algorithm had
begun its rollout.
Of course, Google has been making
noises about mobile optimisation all the
way back to 2009, but instead of forcing the
issue, it just quietly let things roll.
The reason Google took so long to
take action on mobile optimisation is to
do with links and overly diverse website
architectures.
Turning first to links. Links do work,
and help Google understand which sites
and pages are important. Therefore
Google has had to rely heavily on links
from the desktop search results to help it
rank mobile search results. Today, there
“We had thought mobile search results would be turned
upside down, but after one month, only approximately
4 to 5 percent of mobile results have changed.”
a relentless and savage beast that kills spam
links. I’m sure every affiliate has either had
a site, or knows someone who lost rankings
after Penguin began. And in my opinion,
the Mobilegeddon update will turn out to
be just as relentless and carry on for years
to come.
So let’s take a look at what happened,
the data, what may happen, and some of
my best advice on mobile optimisation for
affiliate websites.
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iGB Affiliate Issue 51 JUNE/JULY 2015
is a huge body of evidence showing that
links are gradually becoming less and less
important overall.
This vacuum is being filled by user
engagement i.e. click-through rates from
search results to web pages and dwell time
on site.
The other area where Google has
improved is in its understanding of the
quality and relevance of content.
As for the diverse website architecture,
back in 2009, the Internet was a desktop
universe. It’s taken six years for the Internet
to gradually move towards responsive web
design and mobile friendliness.
Portent published the results of a study
on April 3, 2015, showing that 40% of a
25,000 website sample from the Majestic
Million (a list of the top one million
websites globally by volume of links
directing to them) were not mobile friendly.
Still, 40% is a minority of sites.
So with a more uniform Internet,
alongside greater weighting around user
engagement as a ranking signal and its
increased ability to understand websites
better, Google can now diverge mobile
from desktop search results.
If you think about it, mobile usage is
very different to desktop usage, so there
should be a substantial divergence in the
type of search results that are presented
to users.
Searchmetrics.com performs an ongoing
study of the difference between mobile and
desktop results, and at present, there is a
36% difference between URLs and a 23%
difference in domains. The question is how
great will the divergence become over time?
Money driving change
And of course, there is advertising revenue,
or rather the lack of it. The issue Google
faces is that click-through rates tail off far
more quickly per position on mobile than
on desktop, so advertisers who want to be
above the fold are left fighting it out for the