Freelance Digital Marketing Consultant
Mobilegeddon, what a term, aye? When Google announced last year that it would start flagging up mobile friendly websites in its search results it was a landmark for how seriously the search giant was taking the issue. Whilst corporate designers and developers have been creating mobile-first websites for some time, this was potentially a wake up call to every webmaster in the world.
Cue “mobilegeddon”!
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It’s official – you have just 54 days to make sure your website is mobile friendly or risk slipping down the SERPs. So put this date in your diary – Tuesday 21st April 2015.
When Google says jump many people ask how high? So when the Mountain View search giant announced today that it would start flagging up mobile friendly websites in the SERPS this was a sign of just how serious it is to have a mobile first theme.
Looking at the Analytics stats for one of my busiest sites mobile devices account for over 25% of the traffic. The content was not written specifically for a mobile audience nor does the website cater for such devices, so to know that a quarter of users are already consuming that media in such a manner is important.
Every once in a while something crops up in the world of search marketing that really piques my interest. Caffeine, Hilltop, Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird and all those updates and refreshes in all their versions, if appropriate, are usually talked about ad nauseam and there’s often little to be added to the conversation because there’s nothing new to be said or you’re probably a heretic for saying something different.
Many years ago I used to joke about how nothing is sacred to advertisers and that one day you wouldn’t even be able to go for a quiet visit to the “throne room” without being advertised to; unreeling the toilet roll, there would be an advert on your triple-quilted soft-ply toilet tissue and you’d finally realise that there was nowhere safe to hide from the advertisers. But at least, if you didn’t like what was being advertised, you know what you could do with it 😉
Seriously though, in this day and age, advertising is really starting to cross the line.
Now I must state that I’m not here to bash advertising full stop; I work in the web industry where advertising pays the bills and puts food on the table and advertising has it’s place – but the definition of “it’s place” is now a rapidly moving target.
This morning, I was out driving in my car, using the Waze app on my iPhone, not to navigate around the roads that I know like the back of my hand, but to keep abreast of developments in traffic. After 30 minutes, for the first time ever, an ad flashed up on my screen. It makes sense that, using a free app, it had to be paid for somehow and, since Google brought Waze for a cool billion dollars, there are now ads in the app.
If you look at your stats in Google Analytics on a daily basis as I do, then you can’t have helped notice an increase in the “not provided” phrase at the top of your organic traffic results.
What is this “not provided” in Google Analytics?
So, it’s been a few weeks since Matt Cutts let it slip that Google will be penalising sites for “over optimisation” when he spoke at a Q&A session at SXSW 2012.
In a panel, hosted by Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand, and including Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager at Bing’s webmaster program, Cutts said big G would be “levelling the playing field”. Rather than just regurgitate Matt’s quote, you can read and listen to what he said here.
I’m not going to add to the speculation as to what the details of this new cull may be but as a bread-and-butter SEO and webmaster I’m in two minds about this change. Here’s why:
First up, a big thank you for the Google+ invite from Nick Lewis; local developer and photographer, who, despite living in the same town and within 2 miles of me, I haven’t even met in the few years I’ve known him (via twitter).
So, I clicked my Google Plus invite as soon as I received it but was greeted with a message saying thanks for the interest but Google+ wasn’t accepting any more new users. Disappointing to say the least…