Google's mobilegeddon moves hitting marketers, sites

jos · July 15, 2015

When Google tweaked its search engine in April to favor websites it considered mobile-friendly, initial reports found little impact.

A new study suggests that “Mobilegeddon” was as big a deal as advertised, it just took a while.

The report, from Adobe Systems , found that traffic to non-mobile-friendly websites from Google mobile searches fell 12% in the two months after the changes took effect April 21, relative to mobile-friendly sites. Adobe tracked traffic to more than 5,000 sites, which it divided into mobile-friendly and non-mobile-friendly. Ahead of the change, Google said it would favor sites that looked good on small screens, used bigger text and separated links so that they are easier to tap.

The changes to Google’s search algorithm prompted many website operators to alter their sites, to assure that the sites remained visible in Google search results

Sites that got less organic traffic responded by buying more mobile-search ads from Google, Adobe says. That contributed to a 16% increase in the price

In effect website operators who lost traffic paid the search giant to keep phone users visiting their sites.

Moreover, digital-marketing firm IgnitionOne found a 44% increase in the number of clicks on search ads on phones in the second quarter, compared with the same period a year earlier.