Google Mobile Algo - April 2015 Roll Out

[keyplyr]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4743698.htm [webmasterworld.com] by robert_charlton - 3:18 am on Apr 21, 2015 (PDT -8)

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Different DataCenters probably, but I'm seeing new SERP for everything I search for... that I'm familiar enough with to notice a change. So Cal

[keyplyr]

Well if no one else is seeing an update, then maybe it didn't happen and the big gains I'm seeing are just normal ranking gains for my site... hey, works for me :)

[dethfire]

apparently it is happening now
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

[Shepherd]

It's official, our mobile traffic has been completely decimated, we're going to lose 10's of visitors a year... ;)

[JesterMagic]

Here is a link to a rather detailed faq that Google has just posted on their webmaster blog:

FAQs about the April 21st mobile-friendly update
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ch...]

[kathiru]

Update is rolling out:
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.sg...]

[keyplyr]

While we begin rolling out the mobile-friendly update on April 21st, it’ll be a week or so before it makes its way to all pages in the index.

[enchant]

Once nice thing about this, as a website designer, is I now have some hard ammo to show my customers to convince them that they have GOT to have me redesign their site to be responsive.

"But why didn't you make it responsive in the first place?"

Not all websites I maintain were designed by me. A lot of my customers had their websites designed by their daughter's boyfriend and now they broke up (or some similar situation).

[EditorialGuy]

"But why didn't you make it responsive in the first place?"

It wasn't so many years ago that companies were spending big money to design mobile sites for feature phones. I guess their Web designers were to blame for not anticipating iOS, Android, and phablets that are inspiring a rebirth of cargo pants. :-)

[goodroi]

MODS NOTE: Please let's keep this thread focused on the results of the April 21st roll out.

If you want to talk about pros & cons of mobile design, different mobile solutions, usability or some other mobile topic please start a fresh thread. Keeping threads focused on just one specific topic makes it easier for people to follow the discussion and participate.

Thanks :)

[kaz]

chirp.... chirp...chirp :)

[samwest]

Funny watching everyone about to soil themselves over this update. It happened April 1st. I'm guess the database was prepping for the last 20 days. You'll likely only see changes if you are searching from a mobile device. Desktop SERPs won't change. I've been getting nothing but mobile since the beginning of the month. Relax...

[mike2010]

1. Will desktop and/or tablet ranking also be affected by this change?

No, this update has no effect on searches from tablets or desktops. It affects searches from mobile devices across all languages and locations.

good to hear, considering all the click-happy doom and gloom news articles published yesterday..

[chrisv1963]

Update is rolling out:
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.sg...]

This part is interesting:
"While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal -- so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query. "

[ember]

I know it's just starting, but it feels a little like Y2K. A lot of brew ha ha over not much.

[olenoides]

This is odd, noticed a change this morning in the mobile rankings for my niche where mobile had previously had mirrored the desktop rankings. It's exact opposite of what it should be. The NON mobile friendly sites are ranking HIGHER on mobile than they are on desktop.

[enchant]

Are we absolutely sure this isn't a belated April Fool's joke?

Oh, those scamps at Google...

[mrengine]

This is odd, noticed a change this morning in the mobile rankings for my niche where mobile had previously had mirrored the desktop rankings. It's exact opposite of what it should be. The NON mobile friendly sites are ranking HIGHER on mobile than they are on desktop.

I'm thinking it may be 2-3 weeks before we can judge this update. They call it a rollout because it takes time for everything to be updated.

[engine]

Finally, i'm seeing some changes. I can confirm from the money keyword i mentioned earlier that a site that does not have Mobile friendly has been demoted. Its still there, but demoted.
I expect this roll-out to take some days and weeks to settle.

[breeks]

This part is interesting:
"While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal -- so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query. "

This means if you have a high enough buy with adwords we can overlooking not being mobile-friendly

[alraiah]

No effect on Arabic websites.

[EditorialGuy]

I know it's just starting, but it feels a little like Y2K. A lot of brew ha ha over not much.

I think you meant "brouhaha" (although a brew ha ha sounds like fun), but in any case, the graph in this article may provide some insights:

[extremetech.com...]

Click on a country in the graph, and you'll get percentages for PC market penetration and smartphone market penetration.

In India, for example, twice as many people have smartphones as PCs, so Google's mobile-search update is likely to have a fairly significant impact in that country. In Belgium, where PC usage trumps smartphone usage by a two-to-one margin, the impact should be considerably less.

Caveat: The graph was created in August, 2014, so the disparities between smartphone usage and PC usage are likely to be somewhat different today (greater in some cases, less in others).

[ember]

I think you meant "brouhaha"

Of course, you are right. I must have been thinking of something else when I wrote that :)

[BillyS]

Comparing today to last Tuesday, nothing out of the normal. We get around 4,000 mobile visitors a day, which makes up around 22% of our traffic. We're right around 21% for our mobile visitors today - and we rolled out a responsive design about seven months ago. I chalk up the 1% decline to "noise."

[dethfire]

Yeah my stats look completely normal.

[supercyberbob]

I would like a refund for the time I've wasted preparing for this scam of an algorithm.

[EditorialGuy]

I would like a refund for the time I've wasted preparing for this scam of an algorithm.

Google did say that it will take a while for the rollout to be complete (a week or maybe even several weeks).

It'll probably creep up on you while you're sleeping. :-)

[MrSavage]

I only hope that they stagger this rollout. I would think, learning from the past, having a loud chorus of complaints would occur with a drop dead date. With a gradual rollout? Only a murmur at best. Frankly I'm scrambling and was banking on Google sloooowly rolling this out. Smart PR play. I would do the same.

[keyplyr]

Once again from Google:

While we begin rolling out the mobile-friendly update on April 21st, it’ll be a week or so before it makes its way to all pages in the index.

(emphasis mine)

[Robert Charlton]

^^^^^
keyplyr - Thanks for the quote. Just to make sure latecomers to this thread can find the source, it's at...

FAQs about the April 21st mobile-friendly update
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
Posted: Tuesday, April 21, 2015
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

An important tidbit that I see hasn't been mentioned here yet... If your mobile-friendly pages missed this crawl and won't be ready until a later date, when they are online...

...you can expedite processing by using Fetch as Google with Submit to Index in Webmaster Tools. For a large volume of URLs, consider submitting a sitemap. In the sitemap, if your mobile content uses pre-existing URLs (such as with Responsive Web Design or dynamic serving), also include the lastmod tag.

[toidi]

According to the goog,

we’ve seen a 4.7 percentage point uptick in the proportion of sites that are mobile friendly, and we hope to see even more in the coming months. 

is this enough to affect the serps?

Does this represent the number of sites who have not given up?