Google Update: Latest Announcement Reveals New Direction for Mobile Friendly Sites

Google Update: Latest Announcement Reveals New Direction for Mobile Friendly Sites

Google’s recent announcement regarding mobile marketing is that mobile friendly sites will be bumped further up the search list, reinforcing the growing surge in the demand for sites that are accessible on smartphones.

This new algorithm, due to be updated for the second time in the near future, will rank websites based on how mobile friendly they are for the user. 

Great news for mobile marketers. But effectively, if you want top billing on the world’s biggest search engine, you need to get your act together and make sure your site has a successful SEO strategy that will look & feel good on iPhones and Androids. 

In a statement Google said:

“Getting good, relevant answers when you search shouldn’t depend on what device you’re using. You should get the best answer possible, whether you’re on a phone, desktop or tablet. Last year, we started using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal on mobile searches. Today we’re announcing that beginning in May, we’ll start rolling out an update to mobile search results that increases the effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.” *
Source: Google Webmaster Blog

It’s clear that mobile sites are the way forward; they correlate strongly to greater user experiences, which will only get more advanced in the near future. The simple fact is that mobile searches have overtaken desktop searches in the last few years. Add that to the speed with which smartphones are developing and it’s safe to say that the mobile marketing trend isn’t going to dry out any time soon.

This announcement is just a drop in the ocean when it comes to looking at mobile consumerism as a whole. Stats* show that we are now well past the tipping point in terms of mobile vs. desktop.

Mobile digital media time in the US is now significantly higher at 51% compared to desktop (42%) 

Over an average month, men and women spend on average 89% (30 hours approx) of their social media time on mobile compared to 11% (4 hours) on a desktop 

90% of time on mobile phones is spent on apps 

Amazon has seen an 87% audience growth on mobile

Apple has nearly as many unique users on mobile as it does on desktop

* Source: Smart Insights Blog

Google have stressed that anyone who has a mobile friendly website has nothing to worry about so it seems rather than changing their algorithm they are just making it abundantly clear that this is the direction they’re taking.

So for B2B marketing, if you’re slow to react and don’t develop a strong SEO strategy it seems that you’ll be left out in the cold whilst watching your mobile friendly rivals soar past them in the search rankings.

For the consumer, well it can only be a good thing for them. They’re pretty much guaranteed to have a pleasurable experience when searching the web on their smartphones. With that in mind, it doesn’t take a genius to predict that the trend for mobile consumerism will continue to grow exponentially.

Natural selection in action, folks.

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