When Google changed its mobile search algorithm to start favouring mobile-friendly websites in April, most brands and publishers were prepared, having developed sites and content that were already optimized for cross-device viewing.
But some weren’t ready, and they paid a price for it.
The numbers are now rolling in about how much “Mobilegeddon” affected search results. According to Adobe Digital Index, weekly organic search traffic to websites that Google doesn’t consider “mobile friendly” has fallen on average 6.2% relative to sites that were “mobile friendly” in the ten weeks since Google’s mobile search algorithm was changed.
The slump was worst the week of May 19-25 (which included Memorial Day in the U.S.), when non-mobile friendly sites pulled in 12.5% less traffic than mobile friendly ones.
Another recent study by Stone Temple Consulting found that almost half of non-mobile friendly sites (46.6%) saw their site’s search rank drop in the month after Google implemented the changes, compared to a baseline of only a quarter of mobile friendly sites (25.4%) that fell in the rankings during the same period.
Evidently, Google’s big mobile change did have a significant impact. But perhaps its most important outcome has been convincing marketers of the urgency of developing content that works on mobile, where consumers are now spending the majority of their online time.
It’s meant that companies like California-based Readz, which has built a business converting content quickly and easily to mobile, have seen a big uptick in business, as the last holdouts have started looking for ways to close the distance with competitors who are already comfortable working across devices.
Readz just came out of stealth mode Thursday, with US$7.2 million in venture backing and a web design platform that founder and CEO Bart De Pelsmaeker claims can make designing cross-platform microsites as easy as throwing together a PowerPoint.
Various iterations of the platform (which De Pelsmaeker’s team has been developing since 2011) have been used by clients like Deloitte, Microsoft, Hilton Grand Vacations, and IBM to develop product landing pages, magazines, whitepapers and other one-off content pieces. According to Readz’ internal numbers, clients have seen an average 8x increase in mobile readership since adopting the product.
De Pelsmaeker said that while a lot of Readz’ users are web designers, a growing percentage of its userbase are marketers who need to whip up a whitepaper or product page on the fly. “We tend to focus a lot on user friendliness and accessibility. And as we kept doing that, we saw more and more marketers coming on,” he said.
A lot of Readz’ current clients are B2B marketers, who De Pelsmaeker says are turning to mobile to make their thought leadership content more easily digestible and attractive to clients. He said that, so far, B2B has struggled to create mobile-ready content, and there’s a big opportunity to assist that market in going mobile.
He pointed to a June survey by B2B marketing consulting firm Regalix, which found only half of B2B marketers (51%) have invested in mobile marketing. Not surprisingly, they’re not seeing great results. Nearly three quarters (71%) said that mobile made up less than a quarter of their traffic, and a similar 72% said it accounted for less than 10% of their revenues.
De Pelsmaeker argued that the numbers are paltry not because clients aren’t interested in viewing content on mobile, but because the content formats that a lot of B2B marketers rely on — like the ubiquitous PDF whitepaper — take time to download and can be a real pain to read on a small screen. With Readz, they can quickly turn that information into a snazzy mobile-optimized microsite that clients can read at home or at lunch on their tablets. (Readz’ similarities to PowerPoint probably don’t hurt with that crowd, either.)
In both B2B and B2C, customers have begun to expect that they can access content by mobile, De Pelsmaker said. “[We’re seeing] a growing amount of product research on mobile, and there’s less and less tolerance from people for non-mobile friendly website. Those two together make it so that if you want to do well in organic search, you have to be mobile friendly with all of your content.”
