Google mobile algo to be bigger than Panda / Penguin as deadline looms

[Whitey]

Gary Illyes retweeted
Aleyda Solis @aleyda Mar 17
Zineb from Google at #smx Munich about the mobile ranking update: is going to have a bigger effect than penguin and panda! [twitter.com...] .

In case you know someone who hasn't heard, you might want to forewarn them of the impending intensity of this.

I wonder if the algorithm will allow a quicker reprieve for those that go under, but are mobile friendly afterwards, or, if it makes those who are putting in late changes more vulnerable, as the algorithm might be baking already, as the deadline looms.

Anyone you know not heard / caring ; other thoughts ?

[vphoner]

I have to agree with others that we don't want to see lower quality/less relevant sites ranking better just because they are mobile friendly. Leave the best content up regardless of mobile friendly, or make the ranking changes subtle, but enough to motivate change to mobile sites, but not so much so that this valuable web content disappears completely from page 1.

I do have a question. I have an older customized non-responsive wordpress theme that looks great and converts well, even on mobile. But not Mobile Friendly. And it has a lot of customized HTML that won't convert even if I used a responsive theme.

--> Does a mobile plugin exist that will give you a mobile theme, but also allow you to edit (just for mobile) your content in your posts and excerpts?

I have not been able to find such a plugin like this. I need to change the content drastically to pass the google friendly test, and an editor that only changes mobile content would allow me to customize each page and over time get the whole site done, and all without having a separate URL, or separate mobile site.

Whoever develops a plugin like this is going to make a lot of money, unless one exists that I have not found.

[MrSavage]

I know this is slightly misplaced, but people have already mentioned this. For me though, this "race", it's about the internet getting ugly. When I mean ugly, I mean ugly, barf ugly. One site for all? LOL. Yeah, you can have ugly and ugly. Let's make our site ugly so it can appease the lowest common denominator. As you setup your responsive, I would keep in mind that the non ugly sites might gain over you. I've seen some disgusting changeovers and that's about to get worse, as the panic sets in. No creativity. No aesthetics. I just went to sports illustrated, and guess what? That's the last time for me. BBC? Tip of the iceberg. One site for all means you get to dish out ugly for the sake of having a single version of your site. So should you appease the search engines or IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE WHAT'S BEST FOR OUR USERS? That's the BS that's been spoon fed isn't it over the past few years? The best thing I ever did was to convert to WordPress. At least for those sites I can provide a beautiful mobile experience without dishing out ugly to everyone else. Satisfy users, or satisfy search engines. We were led to believe that do what's best for our users. So BBC is an example of the designers? Oh yes, easy to say that.

[fathom]

That might be true and if everyone loves ugly they will only use their mobile devices. If that is where they are, who are you to force them to not use their mobile devices because you desire everyone to sit at a desk instead of being mobile.

It isn't the lowest common denominator it's every denominator.

[MrSavage]

What's best for the user is to have a beautiful website and not having to compromise usability/cosmetics for the sake of one particular segment of your traffic. One size does not fit all, unless you're willing to serve ugly to users who don't deserve it. A separate version for each is BEST for the user, whereas one for all is best for.... SEARCH ENGINES. The message being blathered is about what's best for the users. But of course in this instance, let's just forget about that.

[fathom]

I'm an average user and I don't care how beautiful your domain is so long as I get my purchase correctly and securely without any additional hassle nor pomp & circumstance that you desire to throw at me.

I'm sure that 99.99% of the world isn't like me. :) Which means they will desire your pomp & circumstance 100% of the time.

[MrSavage]

It's not about me, it's about the BBC example. I would say that they are a pretty accurate sample size of users. No?

[fathom]

It isn't about this OR that, it's about this & that.

No matter what sample you take anyone out & about will not care about what they care about when they are at home or in the office or on a tablet, laptop or desktop. But their needs change on a mobile device.

You want to provide them choice and on a mobile phone especially fast speed is the #1 requirement not beauty.

[EditorialGuy]

You want to provide them choice and on a mobile phone especially fast speed is the #1 requirement not beauty.

On a Wi-Fi connection, speed may be of less concern than on a cellular connection. (And, of course, some cellular connections are a lot faster than others are.) So it really depends on the user and the context.

In any case, beauty doesn't have to mean Rococo style. Minimalism can be good, and "form follows function" works on any viewing device. :-)

[MrSavage]

Look at gigaom.com from a desktop environment and tell me that it's pleasing. So for me, my choice of course, one less site to visit. I'm just thinking that with the mad panic to appease this "one size shoe fits all" approach, a great number of sites will demonstrate examples of ugly. I see CNET as being one of the best example of accomodating mobile users without crapping on desktop or high resolution devices. If you want to give me a stretched out page when I'm using my desktop, then I suppose you fail the test when it comes to putting your users first. The web can evolve and perhaps responsive can be pleasing on all devices all at the same time. For right now, it isn't. Not even close. I just see madness. That's what I would call this. If what you change and present isn't an improvement, then what does that say about the change? I mean if there was a classic button here, which would I choose to be using right now?

[fathom]

As I stated early in this thread I'm not becoming mobile friendly until after Google launches their algorithm as I need to understand the actual difference not just be responsive to Google's drum.

I'd rather see precisely what I'm missing out on rather than pretending I already know this.

[chrisv1963]

Look at gigaom.com from a desktop environment and tell me that it's pleasing.

It looks terrible ... but almighty Google might be extremely happy since it is "mobile friendly". Websites that no longer look good on desktop should get a "desktop unfriendly" penalty.

[MrSavage]

Here's what I'm interested in discussing. I can tell instantly whether a website has gone responsive. If it's ugly, it's responsive. I'm speaking from viewing websites via desktop or on a display that isn't less than 6-inches. Really what's happening, or is going to become commonplace, is that websites are going to become a smartphone design which are going to be served to desktop/laptop users or tablet users for that matter.

I just think this. If you talk the talk, then walk the walk. Thus, is changing the entire look and feel of your website worth it when it means that the people NOT using tiny screens are going to be served some bland, smartphone looking interface on their 24-inch or 15-inch screen?

So again, it comes down to this question. Are you going to alter your websites aesthetics to pursue greater organic traffic promises which we all know by now, it ultimately a failing pursuit of nothingness? So the threat is out there now that if you don't server up mobile friendly, then your already compromised organic traffic livelihood is more doomed. So who wins? We all have to decide of course.

I'm just saying that I will pack it in before I choose to serve my 20 to 24-inch monitor visitors a website that is designed for a 5-inch device usability and functionality. Responsive is what most so-called experts want and advise. I think we should start listing some impressive responsive websites that we can all aspire to creating. That might be a start.

My solution is Wordpress, but serving up a different rendering of my website which is not using responsive techniques. As a result, the users of my site get the best viewing experience possible. I'm not shoving something down their throat when in reality, it simply ugly. I'm not pointing fingers, but when you take away your visitors choice on what rendering of your site they get to enjoy, you have to revisit whether your site is there to accommodate search engines or is it for the betterment of the visitors.

[keyplyr]

...nothing can be bigger than the screen resolution of an old smartphone in portrait orientation- 320 pixels wide.

You should consider reading-up on cell phone resolutions. That statement is way off base.

And "tweaking" what you already have is often not the solution. Set <divs> to retain what you want on mobile, control the presentation with CSS and leave the rest for desktop/tablets.

[lucy24]

my 20 to 24-inch monitor visitors

That's the real beauty of responsive design. As a user* I'm not forced to choose between scrolling horizontally and opening up my browser window to neck-snapping full width. Or, heck, there's always Option C: leave the site at once.

* Users. Remember those? The people the website exists for? They arrive with some purpose in mind-- and that purpose is almost never limited to admiring someone else's artistic vision.

[toidi]

I'm sure that 99.99% of the world isn't like me. :) Which means they will desire your pomp & circumstance 100% of the time. 

Actually, there are a lot of people like you. My site has always been the ugly duckling and the look has been criticized by numerous web pros and peers.

In my business, i get to meet and work with the sites users and they love it. It has the info they want and it is easy to find.

Beauty in a website should always be an afterthought and not the main driving force, and i get this from multiple users over many years.

[londrum]

I think the bbc website is another good example of a site that has obviously been designed first and foremost to be responsive for small sceens
Everything has become huge, and there is tonnes of white space all over the place. Instead of showing text from the stories on the main pages they have just reduced them to the titles, to make it easier for small screens to scroll through

It's most obvious on the actual news story pages. The amount of content you can see above the fold now without scrolling has dropped markedly -- but there is loads of useless whitespace

[keyplyr]

I think the bbc website is another good example of a site that has obviously been designed first and foremost to be responsive for small sceens Everything has become huge, and there is tonnes of white space...

No - A responsive site does *not* have a certain look. If a site is truly mobile-responsive (and done well) you would not know it viewing from a desktop alone. That's the whole point. To determine if a web page is mobile-responsive, the user would need to view the page on several different size devices. This is to see if the page content "responds" to the size of the device.

My 17 year old web site pages look much like they always have for desktop and large screen tablets. On smaller screen tablets and large phones, only certain content gets displayed on that page. On even smaller size phones, other content gets displayed. One web page, serving different versions of content to different sized devices. This is mobile-responsive.

[fathom]

I fully agree with that ... This discussion isn't about one or the other but having it all.

I don't see what the fuss is about - wikipedia is an elegant solution without alot of graphical framework. Text and pics, the odd graphical chart, audio file and even less video but a superb design that is acceptable to the smallish screen as well as the largest.

I don't wish to lose ranks or traffic for clientele but more importantly I need to understand the genuine difference that the bona fide evidence of waiting will produce not just guessing that Google rherotic is accurate.

Surely if there isn't any appreciable difference your idea of beautiful and all the pomp & circumstance you can mustard will continue to produce massive returns for you without bowing to ugliness.

However if your markets desire ugliness over beauty not sure what is gained by preventing that choice?

Visual appearance isn't always beautiful and that ceratinly doesn't mean your website will sell... While this is a different vantagepoint [m.youtube.com...] Tim Ash's Seven Deadly Sins of Landing Page Opimization points out from CRO vantagepoint your design is often still ugly no matter how you preceives its beauty.

[flatfile]

Also want to add to the discussion. It's not necessary to go responsive in order to be mobile friendly. If you think a responsive design will make your site ugly, then consider redirecting your users to a mobile subdomain or just serve different content for mobile users under the same URL. On some of my sites I just serve my users with mobile optimized content under the same URL, you have to set your Vary header to "User Agent". Just look at StackOverflow and Pinterest.

[MrSavage]

@flatfile, thanks for that, I'll have a peek at those. I swear that "responsive" is like debating religion or politics. Beauty isn't my point at all. It's call usability. If you're serving up a smartphone designed page to people who are using a "normal" screen, then do you really think that the responsive design is providing the maximum usability? Or are you willing to reduce their usability for, I dunno, a likely smaller subsection of your traffic? Like a forum. Do most people use a 5-inch smartphone to spend 90% of their time on said forum? Perhaps in between, but as a preference? I highly doubt it. The last time I checked, a 5 or 6-inch screen sucks compared to my 24-inch monitor. Maybe that's just me. A 7-inch tablet doesn't even need to be treated that much different than a 24-inch monitor user. So really, all the fuss is about a small subset of users. Sure some people have 90% mobile. I get that. However, back to responsive, I can bet people here are so set in that "responsive is going to rule the world and it should rule your world too", that there isn't a rational discussion to be had on the subject. However, @flatfile, thanks for those references and I'll check them out. To me, CNET is the best example of what I want from a website. It's nothing to do with "beauty", but whether it's providing maximum usability without being hit with some ugly stick. I'm all ears on beautiful and non smartphone looking websites that render intelligently on my 24-inch monitor. I'm sure this is a new frontier and that somehow it's going to become more pleasant. However, being all things to all people in life doesn't work so I don't see how people can suggest a website can do this. There is a difference between ugly and usable. Webmasterworld is an example of no frills, but was it ugly to me? No, because it was fully ideal for what its purpose was. All the glitz wasn't necessary. The color scheme was fine. I want to clarify what "ugly" really means and it's more than just the cosmetics of a site. It's also about breaking it down and dumbing it down. Lastly, @Lucy, it sounds like you're in the group that says "search engine" over "user". If what you're doing is chasing away visitors, I can't see how that's anything other than machine over man.

[EditorialGuy]

Responsive layouts are a workaround, not a universal solution. For text-heavy content, I find that having separate mobile URLs works better, because things like paragraph length (and resulting white space, or the lack thereof) can be optimized for smaller screens. Similarly, we use a lot of links to non-mobile-friendly sites on our desktop/laptop/tablet pages, and with the "two URLs" method, we can remove links that don't work well for our mobile users.

Finally, we earn a lot of money from affiliate links to a vendor that uses separate mobile and non-mobile URLs, so the "two URLs" approach lets us send readers to the landing-page format that's most likely to convert.

[Selen]

The most annoying thing to me in 'responsive design' are all these confusing menu icons. I usually have no idea what a particular icon means so I'm forced to click on all of them just to learn what they are all about. How about using words instead of confusing icons - yes, it's so 90ties but it works ;)

[RedBar]

Just look at StackOverflow and Pinterest.

Both are poor examples, neither site is repsonsive in desktop mode when the browser window is narrowed and as for Pinterest redirecting, for me, to their UK site, arghhh!

[RedBar]

To me, CNET is the best example of what I want from a website.

And yet again, this does not work properly on the desktop when narrowing the browser.

These are not what I consider as fully responsive.

[RedBar]

How about using words instead of confusing icons

Yep, I have html5 fully responsive across all devices with words, no icons.

[lucy24]

it sounds like you're in the group that says "search engine" over "user"

Not sure what post you're responding to, but it wasn't the one I wrote.

[flatfile]

@RedBar

Both are poor examples, neither site is repsonsive in desktop mode when the browser window is narrowed and as for Pinterest redirecting, for me, to their UK site, arghhh!

Both those sites check your user agent and serve content accordingly. The point I was making is that you don't have to create a single responsive site especially if you think the whole process will make your site ugly or less functional.

[RedBar]

But I do not want sites to check my user agent, I hate it when a site decides that because I am using my 10" Android Xoom that I shoud be served their mobile site and then have to force it into desktop, in fact I do not want an either or site, I want HTML5 + CSS3 then no one has to worry about the look or whether it's mobile or desktop.

Too many here are trying to cobble together a fix-it for the moment remedy, sticking plaster, call it what you like. Yes, I appreciate some sites have thousands of pages however get the thing right and you'll wonder why you ever questioned the move to html5 responsive. I took 2 years testing my different templates before deciding which would be the best to use, it's by far the best decision I have ever made.

And let's get something absolutely straight, no one, absolutely no one, can say they have been caught by surprise, this has been on the cards for years, I was asking Google direct some 15-18 months ago to give us a responsive working completion date...if you don't want to adjust, fine, I have no problem with that but do not complain if you do lose traffic, it's your choice.

I made my mind up some 3+ years ago the way forward and, believe it or not, my workload is a lot less now than it used to be.

[EditorialGuy]

The point I was making is that you don't have to create a single responsive site especially if you think the whole process will make your site ugly or less functional.

Exactly. A lot of people think "mobile-friendly" means "responsive." In reality, there are a number of ways to create mobile-friendly pages, and one size doesn't necessarily fit all.

[MrSavage]

Glad to hear there is some agreement on mobile not requiring responsive. However, it's a trend and really it's about all I'm starting to see these day. As the deadline looms, me thinks it all goes in that direction. CNET for clarity sake, gives me the best possible desktop experience and gives me a totally different and completely ideal experience when using my Nexus 5. They didn't try to say okay, let's make that smartphone friendly design work for those 24-inch monitors at the same time. Regarding user-agents, I would FAR FAR prefer that option (that remembers my choice) of using a non responsive version of a website, vs. having to endure today's responsive designed websites. Clicking "show me desktop version" is far more user friendly to me than having to experience all these ugly responsive design websites that are popping up everywhere.

Right now I have a few sites, made the old school way, which need a mobile fix. Has anyone found that with the Google mobile test, that when you put in the viewport language, that the tool still says no viewport is setup? I'm a bit confused why I get the "X" on viewport when I've added it to my test pages. Is this because I didn't go responsive and have to use viewport? Sounds silly, but I believe I read the sale pitch on going responsive on Google somewhere.