Google Changes To Mobile Search Could Crush Millions Of Small Businesses

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Oh no! Mobilegeddon is upon us! Damn you Google! Damn you for crushing millions of small businesses! Thanks to Zarathustra[H] for the link.

The algorithm will start favoring mobile-friendly websites (ones with large text, easy-to-click links, and that resize to fit whatever screen they're viewed on) and ranking them higher in search. Websites that aren't mobile-friendly will get demoted.
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Oh No! If your site isn't mobile friendly, you don't get ranked high from a search on a mobile device!
 
Yup. We busted out a RWD version of Magento in a few weeks to prep for this.

Traze said:
Oh No! If your site isn't mobile friendly, you don't get ranked high from a search on a mobile device!
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No, if you aren't mobile friendly, you don't get ranked highly on ANY device. Mobile, or desktop.
 
I hate mobile views. Seriously. I wish they wouldn't exist. It'd be nice if they worked, but they usually rely on a lot of javascript to do what they do. It's neat to look at, but javascript is something that generally runs worse on any non-flagship phone that isn't using a state-of-the-art browser. It's fine for some news sites that only need to present you text and some images, because those can just be some CSS tricks or something... but there are a lot of sites where I wish they would just give up with trying to give me a mobile experience. It's slow, it's clunky, and it doesn't have everything I want there. These days I give up and try to present them with a desktop user agent, in hopes that they'll just give the normal view. It's sad.

So this move pisses me off slightly. Mobile views aren't where they should be, and they simply don't work for some pages in the first place. Those pages are already as simple as they can get without losing core functionality. Yet, those get pulled down on the rankings? Meh.
 
Ruoh said:
No, if you aren't mobile friendly, you don't get ranked highly on ANY device. Mobile, or desktop.
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"On Tuesday, April 21, Google is making a major update to its mobile search algorithm that will change the order in which websites are ranked when users search for something from their phone."

No, effects mobile devices only.
 
Guess this means I will be using my phone even less for searches than I already do.

Or I could just start using a different search engine with my phone.

I generally hate the "mobile" version of web pages and usually switch to the regular version on a web page if the web page will allow me.
 
I agree with StoleMyOwnCar. I've found maybe two sites that have workable mobile views and the rest are a huge usability downgrade.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I hate mobile views. Seriously. I wish they wouldn't exist. It'd be nice if they worked, but they usually rely on a lot of javascript to do what they do. It's neat to look at, but javascript is something that generally runs worse on any non-flagship phone that isn't using a state-of-the-art browser.
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You can do a mobile view 100% in css using media queries. The browsers that lack support for media queries are generally desktop browsers that don't need them anyway, such as IE 8 and lower. That isn't to say that some sites don't rely heavily on javascript when they probably don't need to. I've always felt that javascript, even as universal as it is these days, should only be used to enhance the experience, but never required.
 
ugh I can't stand most mobile sites, especially mobile news sites. Huge text for no reason. Increasing use of videos, especially videos that auto-play and have hidden pause buttons. Everything always crammed to the center of the screen with huge areas of blank white space on both sides.

I don't understand why it's considered a good thing when your website can tailor itself on-the-fly to work well on a small-screened device, but why does no one give a shit anymore when stuff looks like crap on big screens now?
 
They should also down-rank any site that refuses to load or show the content for mobile devices, especially websites that insist on using their app. These sorts of shenanigans should be heavily penalized but probably won't be.
 
Ruoh said:
No, if you aren't mobile friendly, you don't get ranked highly on ANY device. Mobile, or desktop.
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Exactly.
I don't care for this approach at all.

What would make sense would be if only searches from mobile devices rank web pages based on how good their mobile site is, but desktop searches remain the same.

Otherwise you - as a desktop user - wind up with webpages arbitrarily ranked up in your search based on a mobile version you will never even see.

It's a little bit heavy handed of google here, using their dominance in overall search to improve the experience on mobile devices where they have a huge vested interest.

I can't imagine that European regulators will like this :p
 
Traze said:
"On Tuesday, April 21, Google is making a major update to its mobile search algorithm that will change the order in which websites are ranked when users search for something from their phone."

No, effects mobile devices only.
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I hope this is the case. Googles blog entry on the subject was not so clear.
 
Laureolus said:
Moblie sites a shit.

I'll just force normal google if I can.
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That's what I usually do, but then there are some mobile sites that don't obey the "request desktop site" tickbox in mobile chrome.

So frustrating when you are on the go, and cant get the information you need because it isn't visible on the mobile site, but you can't load the desktop site.

I wonder if there is a way to spoof the useragent to get around this.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041560699 said:
That's what I usually do, but then there are some mobile sites that don't obey the "request desktop site" tickbox in mobile chrome.

So frustrating when you are on the go, and cant get the information you need because it isn't visible on the mobile site, but you can't load the desktop site.

I wonder if there is a way to spoof the useragent to get around this.
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Dolphin has that feature too, not sure if its any bettter than Chrome's but worth a try.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041560699 said:
That's what I usually do, but then there are some mobile sites that don't obey the "request desktop site" tickbox in mobile chrome.

So frustrating when you are on the go, and cant get the information you need because it isn't visible on the mobile site, but you can't load the desktop site.

I wonder if there is a way to spoof the useragent to get around this.
Click to expand...

IE on WP allows you to select the desktop edition for any website. No problem.
 
adapt or die.

That's like saying the phone companies are responsible because you can't get text messages, videos, or other communication means from your customers. Is the phone company responsible for the new technology hurting your business?

No. You are responsible for not keeping up with and adapting to current technologies.
 
i960 said:
You can do a mobile view 100% in css using media queries. The browsers that lack support for media queries are generally desktop browsers that don't need them anyway, such as IE 8 and lower. That isn't to say that some sites don't rely heavily on javascript when they probably don't need to. I've always felt that javascript, even as universal as it is these days, should only be used to enhance the experience, but never required.
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It depends on what kind of mobile view you want to make and how you want to make it. CSS is great for customizing... how the page looks (what a surprise). Javascript on the other hand tends to define a lot of interactivity.

For instance in JQuery Mobile they try to bind swipes and whatnot so that you can design your page with touchscreens in mind. That's cool and all until you realize that polling for these swipes and whatnot is grinding the user experience down to a halt.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13992544/laggy-swipe-performance

Here's someone having issues with it. In my experience, Javascript is generally a pretty fast language. When you're doing simple things like putting this here, loading from AJAX there, watching for a click on exactly this element (even dynamically loaded)... it's all pretty fast. On the other hand, binding to something vague like a swipe? Things start getting a bit tricky. Javascript doesn't have direct hardware level access to your touchscreen AFAIK. So essentially they're probably just trying to watch for clicks, and then where your mouse starts, and then where your mouse ends up over a unit time. This causes all kinds of headaches when it comes to users actually browsing the page. For instance, what if you wanted to make it so that a person scrolls down to a certain div element... then you kind of bind them to a grid if they're in range of it, so that the div element is centered in their view and then they can swipe left and right in order to... say... cycle through images.

I would assume that this is a pretty common thing to attempt. It will probably work horrendously because the browser needs to watch for too much crap. This crap is happening in continuous time, not discrete (discrete would be one click on an object). Continuous time actions are a bad thing to have to watch for carefully. You basically have to lower your sample interval or risk having a completely slow site. But lower sample intervals lead to less accuracy of results (again surprise).. Putting aside performance issues, there's also annoyance for the user. What about diagonal swipes? What if I meant to just scroll down but you're locking me to this slideshow?

Also, what if I don't want to scroll past any of this crap? Mobile experiences are usually vertical in nature. They use something similar to the Accordion in JQueryUI and then hide the portions you're not on (or something like that). What if I don't mind being zoomed out initially to see the big picture, and then zooming in on what I'm interested in? On a phone with at least a 1080p screen, a mobile view is practically unnecessary because 99% of sites perform just fine on a 1080p resolution. Even in vertical alignment.

Really, mobile sites tend to just be cumbersome and nothing more or less. Again, they work for some kinds of places (ie news article sites or something where you're primarily reading)... but when you're actually interacting with the page meaningfully, the sites have to be VERY carefully planned out. Most places just roll out a halfhearted attempt based on some CSS and some horribly planned out javascript.

I'm not saying mobile views aren't impossible. Far from it. But they take a lot of careful, careful planning. More often than not, if you're not up for it, it's better to simply stick with the desktop version because then at least all of the functionality is there and everyone is familiar with it.


Cyraxx said:
adapt or die.

That's like saying the phone companies are responsible because you can't get text messages, videos, or other communication means from your customers. Is the phone company responsible for the new technology hurting your business?

No. You are responsible for not keeping up with and adapting to current technologies.
Click to expand...


Except this isn't adaptation at all. I don't think that many people using mobile phones themselves actually care for mobile views. Google is making a sweeping generalization that most of the people that they are intending to help... might not even agree with. By saying this is natural adaptation of the market, you're just blindly assuming that Google controls and knows exactly what the market wants at all times. Google has a lot of information, but I don't think they've thought this one through.

Furthermore, what the heck defines a site being mobile ready? There are about a billion little ways you can make a site more mobile friendly, so how does anyone know how much is far enough?
 
Gah, that's a bunch of BS. There are a great many users who do NOT use their phone for web activity, and barely use their tablets. Why is Google forcing the issue now? Besides, we have most of a generation who are heading toward permanent nearsightedness for using a phone or tablet for so much web surfing. It's asinine to push this idea.

I never thought I'd say it, but I might be switching to Bing over this.
 
Actually if you look at the criteria, it really means you need to have a decent website.

For any platform.
 
dgingeri said:
Gah, that's a bunch of BS. There are a great many users who do NOT use their phone for web activity, and barely use their tablets. Why is Google forcing the issue now? Besides, we have most of a generation who are heading toward permanent nearsightedness for using a phone or tablet for so much web surfing. It's asinine to push this idea.

I never thought I'd say it, but I might be switching to Bing over this.
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Wha? If you don't use your phone for web activity, you aren't out anything here. If you do use your phone for web, you might get a page better configured for your device. Change...I'm up in arms! :mad:

Ruoh said:
Yeah, I see that now. I think our Mensa-member VP got hit by this:

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-mobile-search-lies-20152.html
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