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

[Dymero]

Conversion is still extremely low for mobile. Changing to mobile-friendly will help make it easier to use a site in general, but isn't going to change that it's just more difficult to do checkout on mobile. Other than Amazon, maybe, which is easy if you already have an account and credit card setup.

One day someone is going to figure this out and their site is going to do extremely well for it.

[EditorialGuy]

With less than 5% of sites making the change to mobile, i doubt there will be much change in the serps to notice.

According to Google (bold added for emphasis):

"In just the two months since we announced this change, 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."

The total percentage of sites that are mobile-friendly is likely to be far higher than 4.7% or 5%.

[petehall]

On UK search I am finally seeing results significantly different on desktop to mobile.

This is assuming both my Mac and iPhone are looking at the same datacenter...

It has arrived.

[DirigoDev]

I have an information/content site with a store. ~1 million monthly uniques. Site is supported by e-commerce sales (no ads). The split is 66.25% mobile, 25.75% desktop. We have a RWD site ready but have not launched for fear of messing with the conversion funnel and sales rates. We are NOT mobile friendly - though the site is completely usable on a modern smartphone. We have no real movement in traffic patterns or rankings yet. Our market is fairly saturated and competitive. Webmaster Tools Search Queries report is not showing a clear signal on any loss of rankings. Just seeing small regular insignificant variations. Traffic is down slightly this week - well within normal range. The plan is to hold for a clear signal. Then we'll launch the mobile site and begin to optimize the sales funnel. We're going with a 100% mobile first approach - site will not be pure RWD (we're going to use some Adaptive). We're using this event to justify a complete rebuild of the brand for phones. I'm confident that waiting was a good choice. With so much on the line we're not going to rush into anything.

[guggi2000]

Please be CAREFUL with the 4.7% number!

The wording is a little unfortunate, but it seems some have misinterpreted the statement.

With less than 5% of sites making the change to mobile, i doubt there will be much change in the serps to notice.

Google's original post:

...in just two months... we’ve seen a 4.7 percentage point uptick in the proportion of sites that are mobile friendly

There are currently 1 billion websites on the web and Google DOES NOT MEAN that 4.7% of those, namely 47 million websites changed from non-mobile to mobile within 2 months.

Google speaks about the PROPORTION, so if there were 10 million mobile friendly sites two months ago, now there would be 470,000 more... that's it.

This is a statement from Google that does not tell us anything without knowing the monthly increase prior to their announcement. Maybe it was similar... who knows

[Shepherd]

Google speaks about the PROPORTION, so if there were 10 million mobile friendly sites two months ago, now there would be 470,000 more... that's it.

Also, keep in mind that this is google's perception of what "mobile friendly" is, not necessarily real world perception.

I remember when the small TVs were all the rage, thank goodness all the TV studios didn't jump to make all content makers format all their shows for small TVs.

google's late to the game on this one, maybe a sign that they are getting too big to move fast.

[olias]

two months... we’ve seen a 4.7 percentage point uptick

Google DOES NOT MEAN that 4.7% of those, namely 47 million websites changed from non-mobile to mobile within 2 months.

The language is slightly awkward because "percentage point" absolutely does imply that if it was say 40% two months ago it is now 44.7%. Clearly still meaningless either way unless we know what the rate was before then.

[EditorialGuy]

google's late to the game on this one, maybe a sign that they are getting too big to move fast.

Why would they even want to move fast? They aren't a startup with only a handful of users: In most of the world, they're the leading synonym for "search."

As for the current rollout, one reason for the apparent slowness may be a desire to introduce the new algorithm incrementally, monitoring the results as they go. That would make a lot more sense than hitting a big green button and hoping for the best.

[guggi2000]

@olias you are actually right with your interpretation of the wording and this makes the statement even more awkward. There is no chance that 4.7% of the web switched from non-mobile to mobile within 2 months, because it would mean 47 million websites have changed. Maybe they meant "active" websites or "top-1000" websites... who knows...

By the way, anyone seeing a REAL change in Google Analytics?

[petehall]

As for the current rollout, one reason for the apparent slowness may be a desire to introduce the new algorithm incrementally, monitoring the results as they go. That would make a lot more sense than hitting a big green button and hoping for the best.

Or maybe this is the rollout speed of every update, only 'we' don't notice until the SERPs start to move which is X number of days after the green button is pushed...

[jetteroheller]

I changed April 18th most of my site to a not perfect mobile layout.

The desktop layout is with the 160x600 Adsense Ads at the right side 1240 pixel width
I added a mobile layout with 680 pixel width and zooming the page to the width of the screen on small screens.

This improved mobile score at developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed
from red 62 to orange 72 points.

I see no change in Google traffic at my English and German sites for mobile and tablets.

[rish3]

Why would they even want to move fast? They aren't a startup with only a handful of users: In most of the world, they're the leading synonym for "search."

There's plenty of evidence that their ability to manage big algorithm changes has degraded significantly over the past couple of years. Not the least of which is that they haven't updated either Panda or Penguin for months. If both of those programs (Panda/Penguin) are in good shape, having them operate on stale data cannot be a good idea for anyone.

Watch a few of the webmaster hangouts where questions come up about algorithm updates. There's palpable tension and uncertainty when they try to answer without implying that there are big issues. "Um, uhh, well..." There's also a lot of stark contradiction depending on which Google employee is answering.

[Shepherd]

Why would they even want to move fast?

Well, if google would have pushed out their idea of "mobile friendly" 2 years ago it might have meant something. 2 years ago only 10% of smartphones had a 4.5" screen size, today over 80% of smartphones are at least 4.5" and the average size is 5". Closing the barn door after the horse is out comes to mind.

[EditorialGuy]

Or maybe this is the rollout speed of every update, only 'we' don't notice until the SERPs start to move which is X number of days after the green button is pushed...

Could be. Maybe Google should have said "late April or early May" and left it at that.

[dethfire]

I agree, the hard date when it takes weeks to roll out anyway, it's not useful information

[keyplyr]

I agree, the hard date when it takes weeks to roll out anyway, it's not useful information

Google did not say "weeks" it said:

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.

It is the "or so" that seems to have everyone making up their own interpretations. In my sector, I saw immediate changes between desktop SERP and mobile SERP early AM on April 21. There continues to be minor shuffling but into the 3rd day now and it looks to be stable. Of course there are differences between regional databases, YMMV.

[olenoides]

@keyplyr How significant are the changes you are seeing in your sector? So far I'm still not seeing any significant difference between desktop and mobile in any of the searches I monitor.

[keyplyr]

My site is info/ecom. It seems some things will never change with Wikipedia still sitting under the top couple Adsense ads.
Then my site (now #2 on page 1) which came from page 2 or 3 (depending on which geo location searched from.) This is for my main, generic one-word search term.

Most pages in the Google mobile SERP are tagged mobile-friendly. I do see the occasional page not tagged mobile-friendly ranking very high though. This is also true for Bing mobile SERP.

Like *all* SERP, the X factor is where you are located when you perform you search. Different datacenter, slightly different SERP. For example, when I search for "steakhouse" here in S. California I get a SERP containing local restaurants, not a major, big name restaurant in New York city.

[Wilburforce]

Yes, now seeing a difference in my UK niche service sector. My site has risen from the middle of page 2 to #2 on page 1 for main key term.

Half the pages on page 1 are still not mobile friendly, however. Possibly that will change in the coming hours/days/weeks.

[IanCP]

Is that 4.7% of the web simply sites known to be friendly/fully compatible with mobile devices with Google's OS?

To hell with the rest - they don't count?

No, I don't have any smart phone.

[chrisv1963]

Also, keep in mind that this is google's perception of what "mobile friendly" is, not necessarily real world perception.

Exactly! I made an "awesome mobile version" for smartphone users of one of my most popular pages and I am now directing mobile visitors to the mobile friendly page. Bounce rate (for mobile users only) jumped from 24% to 39%!

I can see why this is happening. On the original "non mobile friendly" page users immediately had a nice overview of what was on the page. On the "mobile friendly" page they have to scroll more and seem to hate it.

[guggi2000]

@chrisv1963 I see your point, but try to change the concept of the page. Reduce the number of actions, add "teasers", make navigation really simple, etc. Mobile users is a different crowd.

We had the same problem when we tried to convert desktop into mobile.

[trabis]

Portugal here, poetry niche.
Ranking drop today from #4 to #34 on my "not mobile friendly" site. Grrr...

[Wilburforce]

Ranking drop today from #4 to #34 on my "not mobile friendly" site.

To clarify, is this in mobile SERPs, desktop, or both?

[trabis]

I have no access to desktop right now. Yesterday, my desktop ranking was #18, so I was ranking better on mobile. I will check analytics to see if I lost users or not. I used to have 45% of mobile. I have a mobile version ready but I am waiting to see how this goes. I prefer to look at my desktop version. I prefer to zoom, hate scrolling.

Btw, I love this WebmasterWorld version and dislike the mobile one. Using opera browser here.

[RedBar]

I appear to have one site at the moment hit by the mobile update since the last three days it has lost 50% of its regular traffic and also been its worst days of the year.

1. It is fully responsive html5 compliant.

2. It is MY branded product sold globally.

3. It is on its own branded keyword domain.

4. The site is about nothing but the branded product with some 20+ pages and more than 70 images thumbnails and large. There is not another site like it on The Net yet it has been demoted behind several different sites all with very little information about the product to 10th in Google.com and 17th on Google.co.uk.

This is the biggest selling product of its type in the UK market and one of the top five globally.

Thanks a freakin' bunch G!

[keyplyr]

@RedBar - have you tested ranking in Google mobile search with your various keywords/keyphrases from a mobile phone? Has your ranking changed in Google mobile search? How does it compare with searches done from Google on desktop (which was not updated?)

[samwest]

If I go to a mobile phone and speak the most natural search queries for my product, I'm the first results. I've had people around the US do the same and they get the same results. Desktop results are still there for the most part, but I KNOW they are slashing longtail and anything competitive goes right to Google properties. So, with these (semi) respectable looking SERPS, why am I getting such zombie traffic? There is some other smoke and mirror magic going on here. Of the traffic I AM getting, non is converting. They aren't even hitting signup pages and that is unnatural...but par for the tilted course.

For me, the web died on April 1st 2015.

[piatkow]

Just done the same search side by side on my phone and on a laptop on g.co.uk

There are differences in the SERPS on the bottom half of page 1 but no change in the most relevant results. I don't see any "mobile friendly" markers on the phone but mine is one of the smallest smart phones around.

[RedBar]

@keyplyr - I can't test Google mobile results since:

1. It won't load on any of my Android Xooms since they are not compatible.

2. There is no Google app for my Lumia Win 8.1

3. There is no Google app for my Acer Win 8.1

::Pause::

However I have just borrowed a frend's HTC M8 and the mobile results are identical to my desktop.