Is Your Website Google Mobile Friendly?
Google the #1 search engine on the planet is about to change their search engine algorithm again. How will this impact business owners? Great question reader, beginning April the 21st, if your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices it’s going to be harder to rank on Google’s mobile search listings. Recent statistics show that anywhere from a third to half of the traffic coming to your website is using mobile devices. Losing that share of traffic can potentially impact your bottom line in a big way. The new trend is for websites to provide the user with a mobile friendly experience. Smartphone and tablet sales Smartphone and tablet sales are quickly replacing the traditional desktop PC. Many smartphones are just as fast if not faster than desktops from just a year ago. The global smartphone market is exploding as I write this article. Global smartphone sales to end users in 2014 topped 967,780,000, almost a Billion sales and rising. Revenue from sales of smartphones was $264.75 Billion in 2014. Global smartphone market vendor share for Q2 in 2014 had the electronic behemoth Samsung in the lead with 25.20% followed by Apple with 11.90%. Huawei and Lenovo finished in third and fourth place with the remaining 50.6% dominated by other manufacturers. - Source Strategy Analytics July 2014 Samsung took the lead in bridging the gap between personal notebook computers and smartphones by introducing 5” screens and larger. Apple followed suit by introducing the latest iPhone Plus available with a 5.5” display. Larger screen sizes will impact the tablet market, smartphones are just more portable. People search using their mobile devices more now than ever before. Let’s face it not everyone has a personal computer but almost everyone has a smartphone, people may leave home without their car keys but they never forget their phone. Google mobile algorithm This new algorithm will affect websites not only in the U.S. but internationally as well. Google, a company always at the forefront of technology, responded to the growing number of consumers who do searches on mobile devices by building an algorithm that specifically caters to the needs of mobile visitors and ranks mobile-friendly websites at the top of its mobile search Smartphone’s and Apps