{"id":731,"date":"2015-04-23T16:21:04","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T16:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ladsolutions.com\/?p=731"},"modified":"2023-04-01T10:05:20","modified_gmt":"2023-04-01T10:05:20","slug":"why-googlegeddon-requires-a-mobile-friendly-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ladsolutions.com\/blog\/why-googlegeddon-requires-a-mobile-friendly-website\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Googlegeddon Requires a Mobile Friendly Website"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"googlegeddon\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Imagine that you built up your pizza parlor to the point it became considered one of the best in town. Great reviews on Yelp, Urbanspoon and even mentions on TripAdvisor. An accrual of goodwill to the level that despite your small size and business card type website, a Google search of \u201cBest pizza in town<\/em>\u201d places you in the top 3 results.
\nAnd then one day, a patron tells you something disturbing. When they Googled for pizza parlors on their smartphone, they were surprised you didn\u2019t appear in the search results they scrolled through. You duck into the office and do a search on the desktop and your website is the top result. To double check though, you ask the delivery guy to Google it on his smartphone and sure enough you\u2019re nowhere to be found.
\nWhat\u2019s going on? Well, your small business website, along with a multitude of others, has become a casualty of what the search engine optimization community has called \u201cGooglegeddon<\/em>\u201d, \u201cMobilegeddon<\/em>\u201d and the \u201cGoogle Mobile Apocalypse<\/em>\u201d. To be more precise, a recent change in Google\u2019s algorithms whereby websites that aren\u2019t mobile friendly will be ranked lower in searches done on mobile devices.
\nSome in the general public have mischaracterized this as a \u201cGoogle Penalty<\/em>\u201d situation. But that\u2019s being a bit too loose with the terminology. A true manual penalty situation is where Google affirmatively de-indexes all or part of your website or discounts incoming links to it. Usually that is a result of \u201cblack hat<\/em>\u201d SEO tactics such as buying links from a \u201clink farm\u201d.
\nA more accurate description of Googlegeddon is that Google\u2019s algorithms are penalizing websites that aren\u2019t responsively designed to be mobile friendly. And the reason that penalty type language is employed is since Google is indeed trying to shape behavior by using the proverbial \u201cstick<\/em>\u201d instead of a \u201ccarrot\u201d. Some brief background is helpful to understand what is going on.
\nFirst, one needs to keep in mind the core of Google\u2019s Search business. Why has Google become a verb as well as a noun? Its because their business is to provide users with the most accurate, up to date and relevant search results when they \u201cGoogle<\/em>\u201d something. And as a consequence of having THE search engine, it can charge businesses accordingly for advertising for access to all of those searching eyeballs.
\nThe other item to consider is that in early 2014, Internet usage on mobile devices exceeded that of desktop for the first time. And in that same year, Matt Cutts of Google commented that he wouldn\u2019t be surprised if mobile queries exceeded those via desktop by the end of the year. Bottom line is that Google is well aware of the fact that they need to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to mobile search.
\nIn reality, signs from Google regarding the need for websites to be responsively designed and mobile friendly began in 2014 (when they launched a tool to verify mobile friendly design) and in January 2015 (when it became apparent that Google algorithms began to heavily factor it in to search result rankings). It was pretty much inevitable that the stick of Googlegeddon would eventually follow those helpful carrots from Google.
\nAnd so in February of 2015 Google announced that mobile ranking factors would go beyond merely labeling a website as mobile friendly (which its \u201cmobile ranking demotion<\/em>\u201d algorithm had been doing since 2013). An April 21, 2015 deadline date was set for when Google algorithms would also determine just how high a website would rank regarding searches via mobile devices. And Google indicated the stick would be a big one since the changes would have \u201csignificant impact<\/em>\u201d on mobile search results worldwide.
\nIn a realm where the SEO community usually has to engage in a bit of sleuthing to determine the when and what to do about Google algorithmic tweaks (e.g., \u201cHummingbird<\/em>\u201d, \u201cPanda<\/em>\u201d, \u201cPenguin<\/em>\u201d etc.), the message was clear. Websites needed to be responsively designed to a certain level of mobile friendliness or else they would be relegated to the deepest depth of mobile search result rankings.
\nWhat Google aims to avoid is a mobile device search for \u201cBest pizza in town\u201d that brings the user to a site requiring them to spend time fiddling with their mobile display just to find a number that they then have to manually punch in. They understand that mobile users expect better search results and if Google doesn\u2019t deliver them, other search engines will.
\nThat is why a pizza parlor not only has to serve the best pizza in town, but also serve up a website that is appetizing to its patrons\u2019 smartphones. Otherwise, another place with inferior pizza but a responsively designed and mobile friendly website will garner the online reputation for the best pizza in town. And as has become apparent to even least online savvy among us, online perception is reality nowadays.
\nYou can check out whether your small business website has been impacted by Googlegeddon via Googles \u201cMobile Friendly tool<\/strong><\/a><\/em>\u201d. LAD Solutions has a team of website development and design experts that can assist in ensuring that your website is responsively designed and mobile friendly. To learn more about our website development services<\/strong><\/a> please call (888) 523-2926, or click the button below to submit your request<\/strong><\/a>, and one of our representatives will be in touch with you shortly!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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