Have you heard of Mobilegeddon? It’s the nickname given to a major change that happened last week in the online world. Google has a new way of ranking its search results, deciding which sites are at the top of the first page, and which sites are demoted. It’s a dramatic name, and with good reason. If you count on people finding your business via an online search, you had better hope that you passed their test.

Why are they doing this? Google’s motivation is to ensure that people using its search function always find the best sites. And they’re rather good at this. Over 90% of worldwide searches happen on Google. And Google has noticed that people are increasingly using their smartphones to browse the web. So, to keep its search results useful, it is promoting websites that are optimised for mobile users

So who are winners and losers? You can find out by using Google’s mobile friendly test on this link. Type your company’s URL into the box and see whether you get a thumbs up… or not.

Does it really matter to your business? Perhaps your business thrives more on word of mouth recommendations or phone enquiries. Well, clearly some businesses are more exposed than others, but unless you monitor your site traffic very carefully, you may be surprised how many people find you via online searches.

And if people are first discovering your website on a smartphone, you’ll want it to look good, be easy to use, or at the very least be legible, regardless of Google. Six in ten UK adults have a smartphone, according to Ofcom, so that’s a lot of people to miss out on.

If your website is not mobile friendly, I’m willing to bet that it was created a few years back. Any developer creating a site in the past couple of years would have ensured that it looked good on mobiles and tablets of all sizes. Maybe your site was cutting edge at the time, but perhaps now it looks a little dated. And that reflects on you and your business!

I think Mobilegeddon could prove a useful kick up the backside for lots of businesses, who may otherwise have kept going with a “good enough” website for years, but are now forced into an update, to avoid disappearing off the search pages.

If you’re spurred into action, let me know if I can help.