The word "Mobilegeddon" is a combination of "mobile" and "Armageddon" (end of the world).
The main effect of this update is to prioritize websites that japan phone number display well on smartphones and other mobile devices. This change will not affect searches on desktop or laptop computers.
Google announced its intention to make this change in February 2015. Along with the announcement, Google published an article titled "Mobile-Friendly Sites" on its Google Developers page to help webmasters with the transition. Google claimed that the transition to mobile-friendly sites was to improve the user experience, noting that "the desktop version of a site can be difficult to view and use on a mobile device."
Influence
Based on their data set, software company Searchmetrics found that the average ranking of non-mobile friendly sites dropped by 0.21 positions. Content marketing company BrightEdge has tracked over 20,000 URLs since the update and reported a 21% decrease in the number of non-mobile friendly URLs in the first 3 pages of search results. Peter J. Meyers said this is "nothing to write home about."
Google’s mobile-friendly update means major changes to mobile search rankings and results, and officially kicks off the mobile-first era.
On April 21, 2015, Google launched the mobile-friendly update, which quickly earned several nicknames - mobilepocalyse, mopocalypse, mobocalypse, and so on.
The name eventually settled on was “Mobilegeddon” (credit to Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz, as far as I know), because SEOs love to be dramatic.
Google announced the news on their official Webmaster Central blog, as they sometimes do, and explained the update in brief detail, along with a picture to show the difference between being mobile-friendly and not mobile-friendly:
There is no gray area in this update. Your page is either mobile-friendly or it is not. There is no in-between.
Mobilegeddon: It's closer than you think
On February 26, 2015, more than two months before the official launch, Google released the news to let us know that they would be expanding their use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking indicator. This change would begin on April 21, and we needed to be ready.
Google's post begins by laying out the reasoning behind the change:
“When searching on a mobile device, users should get the most relevant, timely results, whether that information comes from a mobile-friendly web page or an app.”
In an April 21 post, Google outlined the impact the update will have:
Affects search rankings on mobile devices only.
Affects search results in all languages worldwide.
Applies to individual pages, not entire websites.
The change was straightforward and huge. Your page was either mobile-friendly or it wasn’t (the answer was “yes” and “no”), it affected everyone, and it was rolling out within a week.
No matter what industry you’re in, whether you sell electronic components or build bridges, your website will be affected.
Google Mobile First
This wasn’t just an algorithm update, it was a cultural shift, and Google was about to change the market.
A common misconception about Google is that they are keen to make life more difficult for search users with changes like this. However, this is simply not the case.
Google strives to improve the user experience as much as possible and to keep it consistent with user behavior and market trends.
This update isn’t actually about organic search, but is in response to consumer behavior, which is moving toward mobile.
Google decided to transform and adapt to consumer behavior. This was the right decision for Google.
Why does Google care so much about the experience users have with their search engine? Mainly because most of their revenue still comes from paid advertising. They want to provide the best experience possible so that people will continue to click on them and fund their dreams of free lunches and robots.
Google is by far the best at predicting and adjusting to search trends. Google’s crystal ball is real and it works.
Will the impact of the mobile apocalypse be as catastrophic as predicted?
We’re told that the impact of the mobile-friendly update will be greater than that of the Panda and Hummingbird algorithms.