It’s been 1 year 2 months and 2 days since Google announced it was going to rank websites that were responsive better than websites that weren’t responsive in their mobile search index. Tons of people were freaking out about this and coined the term Mobilegeddon. There was so much hype and I even got scare tactic emails from web development companies telling me I needed to have a responsive website.
Now 1 year later, just as I suspected it was pretty much all hype. Now sure there were stats of websites loosing rankings for large niches. But I don’t think the local search results were affected at all. In fact just recently I am ranking higher in mobile search than I am in desktop search, and guess what, my site isn’t mobile friendly! aka responsive. Honestly I just haven’t had time to redo my site, I am sure it wouldn’t take long but at this point I don’t think it really matters for SEO. I don’t get a lot of mobile traffic to begin with. Most of my leads are from people in an office or their home searching for web designer on their laptop or desktop.
How I survived…simple, don’t believe the hype. Im so sick and tired of Google and it’s changing algo, and so tired of all the internet bs. So many SEO companies are like parrots and just repeat what Google tells them. Here’s the deal, not everything Google says is true, just like not everything your read on the internet is true. Im a tester, I need proof or something to make sense to believe it. And the proof for Mobilegeddon is it has no affect on my website, and hasn’t ever! And the fact that I am out ranking myself in mobile search versus desktop search just reinforces the fact.
Don’t get me wrong I think responsive web design is a great user experience for the end user. And I do recommend it to my clients for that reason alone. I do inform them of Google’s guideline of ranking responsive sites better in their mobile search, but don’t push responsive for that reason actually it’s just an added bonus. Most businesses or people they aren’t risk takers so it makes sense if they want a responsive site because Google says so. For me I much more of a risk taker and experimenter, that is just who I am. Besides if I did start seeing negative results then I would for sure get my site up to “par” with Google’s mobile guideline. But until then….
How dare Google try and force business owners to become responsive. They have no right trying to force business owners on how to run their own business. A responsive site is an extra expense and the fact that Google pretty much said you have to have it or we are going to penalize you is completely outrageous!