From Tuesday, Google search results will take into account how friendly websites are on mobile devices – from the size of the text, to how easy links are to access – pushing down the websites people find most difficult to navigate from the palms of their hands.
In a blog post for Google webmasters, Takaki Makino, Chaesang Jung and Doantam Phan, said: “We will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.”
Smartphone penetration is currently at an estimated 74% in the UK (comScore), with British adults spending an average of 2 hours 26 minutes a day on mobile devices (eMarketer).
Google also estimates that around half of all searches are made on mobile devices, through mobile browsers and its own search apps.
Industry reaction: Felicity Long, head of digital, Carat
In the convergent world, retailers ignore search at their peril – either online or offline. It is absolutely vital to the retail journey and anyone that ignores search when consumers are looking for products might as well shut the front doors of their offline stores.
Consumers are starting to rely on mobile ready websites to discover products and, ultimately, purchase them. If they are not mobile ready, consumers will switch off.
There is a traditional view that search only drives e-Commerce, but from our perspective this simply isn’t true and this is why Google’s algorithm change could be so significant.
Research from CCS, our proprietary research tool that surveys 11,000 people and their media habits and attitudes, shows us that 36% of consumers in the UK say that they regularly use their mobile phone to compare prices when in store. They also use mobile to discover products, find out about stores and find store locations.
Not being part of this journey is a huge risk for retailers, especially as consumer behaviour moves increasingly mobile.
CCS data also shows us that 23% of consumers in the UK won’t visit sites that haven’t been optimised towards mobile so Google’s move to drive a better experience on this platform is understandable, this will accelerate the retailers mobile adoption – which is a good thing.
However, my biggest concern is that, certainly in the short term, this will disproportionately challenge smaller retailers over their larger competitors.
