Study: 45% of Businesses Saw Ranking Changes From Mobile-Friendly Update
So was Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm update (“Mobilegeddon”) overhyped or not? Well, perhaps yes and no. While the initial consensus after the update’s launch was that changes in search rankings were minimal, a recent study indicates that small-to-medium sized enterprises did see some significant changes – just not complete ranking obliteration as the “Mobilegeddon” name suggested.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
On April 21, Google released an algorithm update which brought potential changes to how sites rank based on mobile-friendliness. Fearing what some called “Mobilegeddon, ” companies scrambled to make their sites comply with the changes to prevent ranking drops following the implementation of the update. The thinking behind this was that if a site was not optimized for mobile, then the site would no longer show up in search results. Luckily, the changes came and rankings seem to have not been altered on a large scale. Early reports indicate that 45% of businesses did see ranking changes following Google’s update, but perhaps not in the disastrous scale anticipated. Some businesses have claimed to notice their sites drop a few spots in ranking, while others have claimed lower traffic.
Though the changes are not as crippling as expected, some have seen a decrease in rank even after optimizing for mobile. According to Ben Norman, CEO of Koozai, the hype surrounding the update caused businesses to miss the larger picture. He says that “exaggerating the impact meant that businesses didn’t anticipate that even small changes in their ranking can have a big impact on their organic mobile search results, ” and now, some have seen negative impacts even after optimizing. Norman claims that while optimizing for mobile, competitors may have increased rank simply because they are better optimized for some of the other 200+ Google ranking factors that exist today. Increasing rank may take reevaluating some of these other factors, rather than focusing on mobile optimization.
Overall, the changes do not appear to be widespread, or nearly as destructive as some expected, but small ranking drops have occurred. You can read this article in it’s entirety here.
Has your site seen any ranking changes since the algorithm update went into effect? Let us know.
Read Original Article
