If your website traffic plummets suddenly, you can blame it on “Mobilegeddon”. The newly coined word specifically refers to Google’s highly publicized change in their search algorithm. What this basically means is that any company or body who hasn’t optimized their website for both mobile and desktop browsers will end up being at the bottom of the search results, according to USA Today.
Google, which dominates online search, is launching the algorithm to favor sites that are “mobile-friendly.” This means that people who use Google to search on their smartphone may not find many of their favorite sites at the top of the rankings. Sites that haven’t updated could find themselves ranked way lower, which in turn could mean a huge loss of business.
Search giant Google, which comScore Media Metrix estimates has a 65% market share of US internet searches, wants sites to load quickly and be easy to navigate on a mobile phone.
Google is doing this because it wants consumers to “find content that’s not only relevant and timely, but also easy to read and interact with on smaller mobile screens,” Google said in a statement.
The update will not affect results from desktop searches.
Google’s last big algorithm update, code-named Panda, impacted “11% of all search results,” says Danny Sullivan, the editor of the SearchEngineLand website. “It was a big shake-up, and this one could be even more dramatic.”
A website ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in a search query could hypothetically fall to ninth or 10th place, causing a loss of thousands of dollars in potential business, says independent analyst Greg Sterling.
Just over half of all searches done on Google are now performed through mobile devices, says Sullivan, a number that continues to grow, as more folks move to spending more and more time on smartphones.
The problem for Iranian websites is that many are not designed for web 2.0, let alone mobile phones thus making anyone around the world searching on a phone less likely to see them appear in the search results. What will this mean in the long run? It is likely that Iranian companies will see their mobile search figures slowly ebbing away over the next few months. This is good news for mobile phone web and app developers in Iran as they will likely see many companies coming to them to upgrade their ageing websites.
