Mobilegeddon: Now and in the Near Future
Stacey MacNaught from Tecmark looks at the early impact of Google’s major update to its mobile search algorithmÂ
Itâs not often that Google makes public announcements months in advance detailing the exact date an update will roll out. But thatâs exactly what happened with âMobilegeddon.â In February, Google announced that 21st April would see the rollout of an update that made mobile a key rankings factor in the mobile search results.
They later added that this update would rollout over the course of around a week, so even as of now (27th April at the time of writing) we donât have a full picture of the influence of this initial rollout.
The rollout is a long time coming. From the moment Google launched a separate mobile web crawler, it began to look likely some influence on rankings would follow. In 2013, Matt Cutts made some key points about mobile in a Q&A at Pubcon:
Shortly after this, Google quietly rolled out a beta version of its mobile user experience recommendations within its Page Speed tool and in the past few months, weâve seen the launch of the âmobile friendlyâ button and accompanying mobile friendly test at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/.
Early Impact
Although the update is still very much rolling out, we have seen some changes already. Based on data from SearchMetrics, it looks like the most notable early UK impact has been outside of the gaming industry. Retailer next.co.uk has lost 38% of its mobile search results visibility.
In Gaming
There are a few things to consider when we look at gaming. Firstly, the operators that dominate the headline terms (âonline betting,â âonline casino,â and similar) in Google were, for the most part, mobile friendly before the rollout. Certainly, the Google UK organic top 10 for âonline betting,â remains identical on mobile and desktop, with all of the first page organic listings having earned a âmobile friendlyâ badge already.
In addition, Google has reiterated that mobile is still just a rankings factor. So, in Googleâs own words (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/rolling-out-mobile-friendly-update.html):
âWhile 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.â
However, there are still some notable losses for some sites to note at this stage.
Skyvegas.com
Skyvegas.com, despite having a mobile subdomain (m.skyvegas.com) has seen a notable drop in mobile visibility as well, as illustrated below.
Again using data from SearchMetrics, we can see some of the headline terms for which Skyvegas.comâs mobile website is now sorely lagging behind the desktop version:
âCasino games,â for example, when searched on a desktop will show the site in 1st according to this (2nd on a manual check at the time of writing). However, itâs 8th on a mobile device.
The interesting thing about this particular site is that it does pass Googleâs own âmobile friendlyâ test. But when we run the site through Googleâs Page Speed Insights tool (https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=m.skyvegas.com) we see this:
The site is slow on mobile. So, irrespective of having optimised the view for mobile users, the site speed appears, at early analysis, to be hindering mobile performance.
Casinoeuro.com
Casinoeuro.com features 4th on desktop for âonline casino,â at the time of writing. Itâs 8th on mobile. Casinoeuro.com does pass the mobile friendly test. However, initial assessments suggest its mobile load speed is somewhat slower than that of close competitors. Indeed, SearchMetrics does suggest a slight drop in visibility for Casino Euro:
We have a similar story here. The site passes Googleâs mobile friendly test but performs poorly in terms of mobile site speed:
Affiliate Led Searches
In terms of the affiliate led searches (tips, reviews, cashback and odds led searches), weâre seeing a little movement here too. The first thing to note here is that the results pages on mobile are less dominated by sites with the mobile friendly badge.
Take âonline slot reviews,â as an example. The same website (online-slot.co.uk) holds the top spot across desktop and mobile. Itâs not a mobile friendly site. In fact, at the time of writing, just 5 of the top 10 for this term on mobile hold a mobile friendly badge.
Itâs a similar story for âonline casino reviews,â where the top spot on mobile isnât mobile friendly. That said, 7 of the top 10 for this term do have the badge.
Racing Post Betting Site
An example of an affiliate led website losing out is Betting.racingpost.com, which is not a mobile optimised site. It appears 4th on desktop for headline term, âbetting tips,â but has dropped to 6th on mobile. The Racing Post overall domain visibility has dropped on mobile too:
What We Know So Far
We know there have been some fluctuations with specific sites, that there are some early losers emerging and that, in affiliate-type searches at least, a mobile friendly badge isnât essential to appear on mobile.
However, for the headline searches dominated by operators, it seems a mobile friendly website is an essential feature. This is highly likely to be down to the fact that there are few big operators now without them.
Whatâs interesting, though, is that even securing Googleâs âmobile friendlyâ status isnât proving enough to prevent sites from losing visibility on mobile. The quality and speed of the mobile user experience appears to be influencing visibility as well.
But of course, this is still very much early analysis. And in reality, the effects of âmobilegeddonâ have been somewhat tamer so far than many expected. We have seen Google roll updates out before, however, and then tweak and change over time.
Whatâs Coming?
It makes sense for Google, if its aim is to present mobile users with the best search experience, to consider âmobile friendlinessâ as a key factor. My personal expectation is that, over time, weâll see mobile friendly websites becoming an even bigger factor in mobile search visibility.
For gaming operators, one of the biggest challenges is site speed on mobile. Thereâs a phenomenal amount of data to fetch and display for many of these websites and making that happen quickly on a range of mobile devices is going to be key and I believe itâs here that the battle for âmost mobile friendlyâ will be won and lost.