Responsive Designs & Mobile Update?

[uggur]

Hi All,

I've some curious about mobile update because off Gary Illyes. He did share a few details in a recent Q&A.

"Mobilegeddon" Is Coming on April 21 - Are You Ready?
By Chuck Price - Mar 9, 2015
[searchenginewatch.com...]

Most notably:

-Responsive design does not have a ranking benefit
-Googlebot must be allowed to crawl CSS & JavaScript to pass the "mobile-friendly" test
-Mobile friendliness is determined at the page level – not sitewide
-Tablets will not be affected by this update
-Google is currently working on a dedicated mobile index

So my question is about responsive design. Will Google reject to resposive designs as mobile? Responsive designs will explode after update?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:07 am (utc) on Apr 16, 2015]
[edit reason] made link clickable, added article title and clarified attribution [/edit]

[Robert Charlton]

Gary Illyes didn't say that the aspects of a responsive design aren't eventually going to help you rank. He simply said that "Responsive" (which I read as 'responsive by-and-of-itself') isn't going to give you a boost in this update. Google will care more about how the responsive design is implemented, and how users react to it. I don't think it's evaluating responsive as a design philosophy. I think they've made that decision, but they're open to site-specific approaches that work.

Thinking out loud, here... this update is intended to filter out sites that are mobile unfriendly. So initially I'd think that mobile usability/ technical factors or design approaches like responsiveness are not going to give you a ranking boost. You'll gain rank because of content, links, and engagement factors.

OTH, particular mobile usability problems may initially affect you negatively. Sites that are so slow on mobile that they are outside a statistical norm, eg, will surely hurt you on mobile. But on this kind of update, I doubt that a really fast site is going to boost you over considerations of content and linking.

I assume that there are going to be Panda-mobile-type examinations of sites, at first mainly usability issues, and that the algorithm will be refined via this launch in preparation for the mobile-only index... and eventually will also incorporate Panda-like quality evaluations. If Google is able to use searcher behavior to calibrate the mobile algorithm, it will.


(Uggur, I know you're asking about the future of responsive, but I'm not clearly understanding the phrasing of your questions in your last sentence. Right now, "...reject to responsive designs as mobile" simply doesn't parse for me. Also, when you ask whether responsive designs will "explode" after the update, I'm not sure whether you mean "explode" in the sense of getting destroyed and failing, or explode in the sense of mushrooming and becoming very important. Please clarify these questions.)

As I've been watching the development of responsive, I'm increasingly impressed by how well certain problems (like image loading) are being addressed. I think that responsive has matured enough that it's likely to be the basis of future mobile development.

I don't know that smart phones, though, because of their small size and because of security issues, are ever going to be completely ecommerce-friendly for certain kinds of purchases... so it remains to be seen how searchers will use mobile in certain ecommerce areas. The supposition now, at least by many observers, is that ecommerce will be used for research in those areas, most likely B2B, and final decisions and purchases, particularly very large purchases, will be made on desktop or tablets.

[uggur]

Gary didn't say like this but I think there is no difference to responsive designs take a benefit now and after update because these are already mobile friendly like specific mobile templates. For this reason responsive designs and mobile templates will not affect directly on this update, it's okey, only affected sites which mobile noncompliant sites. So I agree with you for "this update is intended to filter out sites that are mobile unfriendly."

But as I understand that Garys' sentence is more specific and clear for the future of responsives because he is directly said that "Responsive design does not have a ranking benefit". He didnt say anything for mobile templates, just for responsives. Maybe not now but In the future google may will destroy to responsives.

Sorry my English (: I mean resposive designs will decrease on SERPs and mobile specific templates will be more useful for both google and users - I dont know the mean of usefull for this sentence but I think to be more mobile friendly because of pagespeed issues and browser render timing etc. - So IMO mobile specific templates will be gain a plus than resposive designs while I'm thinking about to Garys' sentence in details.

And again please and please I'm sorry for grammatical problems.

[goodroi]

Worry less about the specific technology and worry more about the purpose and goal you are trying to reach. Being mobile friendly is a good thing and there are different ways to achieve this.