That was the day Google started to “ditch” the search results that were not mobile friendly in their mobile search. Some called it Mobilegeddon. Wish I had thought of that title, but saw it first on SearchEngineLand.com, then, other sites and just had to use it.
Strange thing about this announcement by Google is that typically their algorithm is top secret. But in this case there were so many articles that it would be hard to count all of them. That is, unless you search on “Google mobile-friendly update” to see that there are 156 million results. Okay, this is definitely no secret.
Why was this change such a big deal that even Google revealed the secret? Google is all about relevance. If visitors of the search engine behemoth do not receive results that they can use, the visitors will migrate elsewhere. It was time to give a little insight to their visitors.
Here’s what Google had to say on their Webmaster Central blog, “Now searchers can more easily find high-quality and relevant results where text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.” It’s all about returning relevant results to a huge (and still growing!) percentage of Google’s visitors. In November 2014, for example, nearly 50% of Google’s traffic sources were from mobile devices. (Source: SimilarWeb.com)
What does all this mean for recruiters? It is extremely important. Without a mobile-friendly career site, your search engine traffic will undoubtedly diminish big time. Think about this for a moment…in a study of over 8 million clicks, 94% clicked on the first page of results as opposed to 6% clicking on the second page. (Source: Chitika).
Sure, we are only talking about your mobile search results. But mobile is becoming more and more prevalent. A Censuswide study showed that 65% of people are using their mobile devices to search for jobs. In the most employable years the numbers are extremely high. For example, 77% of people aged 16-34 used a mobile device in their job search and still a healthy 72% of people aged 35-44 used mobile as well.
If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to review your mobile-friendliness. Not sure if your website can survive the recent Mobilegeddon? Google has provided us with a easy-to-use Mobile-Friendly Test Tool.
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