Category Archives: Mobile

Hello!
This is Bill from the Orion Group. I am reaching out to as many people as I can to explain, in layman’s terms, what Google did on April 21st of this year. Some of you may have heard about Google’s “Mobilegeddon”. The title is most accurate because what Google did was literally pull the rug out on the entire internet affecting every website that exists today.

For those of us who do not understand, here is what Google did.

• Mobilegeddon refers to what Google did for searches done on mobile devices.
• Google has come out and said that web sites that are Responsive in nature, or mobile-friendly, will show up in search results on mobile devices unaffected.
• What Google is really saying here is that if your web site is NOT mobile-friendly “Responsive“, your site may not show up at all, or be buried in the results, on searches performed on mobile devices.

Why is this important?… because Google does not play around and make such announcements just for fun.

• Roughly 60% of ALL online traffic now comes from mobile devices.
• 48% of all mobile research for products or services start on search engines.
• This update is for ALL individual pages, NOT just your homepage
• Check this out! Google’s “Mobile-Friendly” Update Could Impact Over 40% Of Fortune 500 Websites.

Want proof this is happening?

• In the four days after the rollout, boxofficemojo.com lost roughly 33% of their website traffic. A 64% loss in ratio of mobile vs desktop.
• Another example of how NOBODY is exempt from Google. Here’s the traffic loss from a government entity, census.gov. 23% overall loss and 53% loss in ratio of mobile vs desktop.

All of this is because neither site was optimized to “mobile friendly” status before the algorithm update by Google.

Does this not make one think that if such a large percentage of web sites are not responsive, and only those that are will be shown in mobile search results, then we better get going and update our web site? We need to take advantage of being part of the small percentage of sites that will show up in mobile search results and capitalize while others are still playing catch up. In essence, the entire internet is starting over and only the smartest of companies that understand all of this will take advantage of such a small pool of competition showing up in mobile search results.

This is a chance that may never come around again. In order to rank higher in mobile search results and NOT be doomed to losing that traffic all together, you have to have a website that is mobile-friendly. When will Google say that they will be doing the same thing in Desktop and Laptop searches? It’s a scary thought but Google is scary.

I believe Google is forcing the entire internet to do it their way. It purifies searches and it will cost advertisers a lot more money as the field of viewership will be so much narrower for a while.

So, while you may have been putting off redoing your web sites for years, there is now an opportunity to strike while the iron is hot. When the wagons went west in the search for gold, it was the first ones there that got richest the quickest. Now this can be said for having a responsive, mobile-friendly website. If your business values mobile traffic, why wouldn’t you want to be able to cash in on being the only ones who come up on the mobile search results with little to no competition around you for the foreseeable future?

How can you tell if your current website meets Google’s definition of mobile-friendly? There’s an online tool for that. Visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/, paste or type in the URL of your website, and click Analyze. Does your site pass? If not, then it’s HIGHLY likely that your site is NOT showing up in mobile search results.

This was a collaborative effort by Emma Edgar, Adam Kuhn & Kevin Barnes

If your website is not mobile-friendly, Orion Group can help.
Call 262-820-9520 for a free consultation.