What business owners think about Google's plan to punish sites that don't look good on mobile phones
On Tuesday, April 21, Google is making a major update to its mobile search algorithm that will change the order in which websites are ranked when users search for something from their phone.
When we asked small businesses and webmasters what they thought of the update and whether or not they were prepared, we got a flood of emails. Here's some of what we heard:
I didn't know the change was coming
The bright side: about 70% of his clients have mobile-friendly sites already.
I knew the change was coming, but the process of making my site mobile-friendly was too difficult
He writes: "My site pre-dated Google by several years. I worked many hours to make changes to my website so it would function well on both desktops and mobiles. After wasting a lot of time accomplishing nothing, I determined that the two goals are incompatible.
"Mobiles need a website address optimized for mobile traffic, and desktops need a site optimized for desktop traffic. Perhaps hiring an expensive website developer could solve my problem, except for the issue of locating the big bucks to pay the overworked developer. I'm about ready to throw in the towel on my 20-year business. It is the premier website address for the beef jerky industry with $3 billion in annual sales. You would think it could do very well. But I just barely eke out a living that almost supports one person."
I knew the change was coming, but still scrambled to update my website at the last second
"My small 5-person team at SuretyBonds.com has been working relentlessly for the last 3 months to get our 1800+ page hand-coded static site to a responsive mobile-friendly format. Somehow, by abandoning all other projects and focusing solely on re-coding our site in-house collectively, we managed to take our mobile errors count in Webmaster Tools from 258 in February to just 27 (the 27 mostly being issues we meant to not immediately address for internal purposes, importance, etc.)
"We offer the largest collection of dedicated information on surety online and depend solely on search results from Google and Bing for driving business. We also were hit severely by the Penguin & Panda updates over 2 years ago so we learned our lesson to say the least."
"Our custom coded site took months of development but our WordPress sites were easier to change by changing the theme on the site or adding a simple plugin. We're anxious to see what happens now that the changes are supposed to be made."
I didn't know the change was coming, but I'm prepared and excited
"I saw the writing on the wall, but honestly, I didn't formally know this Google algorithm change was coming. I'm so excited about it now - knowing it is hours away. It will only pay-off for us! We have burned things to the ground and started over more than once (to get it right). This push for mobile-friendly sites is super exciting because we have been working on that. If you have not been working on mobile, video, and overall user simplicity...be afraid, be very afraid."
"I run my company's website. As a small business owner, I was actually HAPPY to hear about Google's algorithm change. Since I've worked in media and communications for ten years, I knew the importance of having a mobile-friendly site from the get-go. Therefore, when I hired a web developer to set up my website, I specifically requested she use a mobile-friendly/dynamic WordPress theme. With these changes launching tomorrow, Google may actually INCREASE my website's rankings, giving me an advantage over other businesses that were not as mobile savvy. For this reason, I appreciate the change, as I'm still building my client base."
But the update is still expected to cause a major ranking shake-up.
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