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26.05.15

Mobile friendly: How strong was the impact?

A recap of my previous post

Last time I wrote about whether I felt that the "Mobile Friendly" update would impact tablet devices. I came to the conclusion that tablet results and tablet rankings were separated out from 'mobile' (phone) results. I decided this based on the power of tablet devices, the size of their screens and also their generally higher bandwidth capacity. Since tablets are often used in the home with no sim card, they usually share desktop broadband speeds via home Wi-Fi setups, rather than using mobile signal data speeds (up to 4G).

My initial predictions were supported by a recent post on Search Engine Roundtable here. Now that we know exactly which types of devices and device-specific query spaces were impacted, we can begin to see some of the brands and sites which were affected most as a result of this update.

Who was affected by mobile friendly: The data

It's still early days, but since 26th March 2015 (prior to the Mobile Friendly update) I have been collecting ranking and basic visibility data. The data itself concerns a few well known US and UK high-street brands (or otherwise well-known institutions):

American Airlines (aa.com)
ASDA (asda.com)
Boots the Chemist (boots.com)
Dell Computing (dell.com)
Jhu.edu (Johns Hopkins University)
Primark (primark.com)

All of the above sites showed issues when they were run through Google's Mobile Friendly assessment tool.

Here is a breakdown of the specific issues which were (26th March) impacting each site:

American Airlines
Judged poorly by Google's Mobile Friendly tool due to:"Mobile site blocked in mobile robots.txt"

ASDA
Judged poorly by Google's Mobile Friendly tool due to:"Mobile site blocked in mobile robots.txt"

Boots
Judged poorly by Google's Mobile Friendly tool due to:"Mobile site blocked in mobile robots.txt"

Dell
Judged poorly by Google's Mobile Friendly tool due to:
"Not mobile-friendly
Text too small to read
Links too close together
Mobile viewport not set"

Jhu.edu
Judged poorly by Google's Mobile Friendly tool due to:
"Not mobile-friendly
Text too small to read
Links too close together
Mobile viewport not set
Content wider than screen"

Primark
Judged poorly by Google's Mobile Friendly tool due to:
"Not mobile-friendly
Text too small to read
Links too close together
Mobile viewport not set"

Both desktop and mobile rankings were collected for each brand on the following dates:

1) 26/03/2015
2) 24/04/2015
3) 01/05/2015
4) 13/05/2015

The rankings were pulled for around 300 keywords per brand. The keywords themselves came from SEMRush, though I performed the rank-checking myself to ensure the data was accurate. The rankings are regionally specific; for American Airlines I used Google US and Google Mobile US, whereas for Boots I used Google UK and Google Mobile UK (in terms of search engines).

Visibility was calculated by leveraging the relationship between search volumes and rankings in order to generate a basic 'visibility score'. Since I find average CTR data inaccurate at best (and since I had no access to accurate CTR data for these brands), I elected to exclude this data from the research in order to try and keep it to only accurate data sets. The generated visibility scores are very simple and mathematically pure.

'IF' statements were included so that any keyword ranking outside the top 75 would always display '0' for visibility, no matter the search volume. This was to compensate for the fact that users don't usually browse that far through the SERPs. Hopefully this increased the accuracy of these simple visibility scores somewhat.

So what happened?

American Airlines

26th March 2015 - Pre update
Before the update was even released, American Airlines were having some issues with their mobile visibility. This is likely due to the fact that their mobile robots.txt file (http://mobile.aa.com/robots.txt) was blocking Google from accessing their mobile site.

24th April 2015 - A couple of days after the update
American Airlines were obviously aware of the update and appeared to make some much needed improvements pretty quickly. Their mobile visibility shot up soon after the mobile friendly update.

1st May 2015 - Turn of the month
Mobile visibility remained high.

13th May 2015 - Unlucky for some?
Not unlucky for AA; mobile visibility remains high to date.

Overall impact of mobile friendly so far
American Airlines became aware of the Mobile Friendly update and used Google's tool to check for existing mobile issues on their site. American Airlines fixed the issue they were having with their mobile robots.txt file:

As a result, the Mobile Friendly update was actually beneficial for American Airlines. Without the looming update, they probably wouldn't have scanned their mobile robots.txt file for such issues.

ASDA

26th March 2015 - Pre update
ASDA desktop visibility was higher than mobile visibility, but not by much. Things looked fairly standard across the board.

24th April 2015 - A couple of days after the update
Both mobile and desktop visibility began to drop, noticeably. Visibility is less seasonally affected than traffic and revenue, so this looked worrying to me.

1st May 2015 - Turn of the month
From bad to worse, ASDA was having real issues at this point. This was possibly due to having their mobile site blocked in their mobile robots.txt file (http://m.asda.com/robots.txt). Because desktop rankings were also tumbling, I suspect there were other changes occurring at this point which were negatively impacting organic visibility, impacting visibility outside of just the mobile update.

13th May 2015 - Unlucky for some?
Visibility seemed to shoot up again here. Note that this was due to one or two gains on headline brand terms which carry huge amounts of search volume. This threw the numbers out a bit, but ASDA certainly seems to be in recovery.

Overall impact of mobile friendly so far

ASDA are still blocking their mobile site in their mobile robots.txt file:

This along with increasing 'SERP turbulence' (from the Mobile Friendly update) is potentially causing erratic shifts in their ranking positions. Because their desktop rankings were also affected, it's highly likely that something else also went wrong with ASDA's SEO during the same time period, though it (whatever 'it' was) now appears to be corrected.

Boots

26th March 2015 - Pre update
Boots started out with high desktop visibility, but fairly poor mobile visibility across their primary keywords.

24th April 2015 - A couple of days after the update
Just after the update in April, desktop visibility lifted slightly but the lift in mobile visibility was much less noticeable.

1st May 2015 - Turn of the month
Desktop visibility dropped here, but mobile visibility continued to rise.

13th May 2015 - Unlucky for some?

The prior trend of higher desktop and lower mobile visibility returned during mid-May.

Overall impact of mobile friendly so far
Boots were having issues with their mobile visibility due to blocking the majority of their mobile site through their mobile robots.txt file (http://m.boots.com/robots.txt). Boots have now fixed this issue:

However they haven't seen a huge lift. This may be because they have less mobile than desktop site content. In actual fact; the effect of Mobile Friendly on Boots was completely negligible.

Dell

26th March 2015 - Pre update
Both mobile and desktop visibility were moderate.

24th April 2015 - A couple of days after the update
Barely any difference.

1st May 2015 - Turn of the month
A huge spike in mobile visibility. Probably not an 'actual' gain; likely just mobile SERP turbulence from the Mobile Friendly update throwing up mobile query-space anomalies.

13th May 2015 - Unlucky for some?
A return to the starting visibility figures, no spectacular gains or losses for Dell.

Overall impact of mobile friendly so far
The Mobile Friendly update was underwhelming for Dell. Dell made no gains (unlike American Airlines), probably because they have chosen to ignore Google's mobile-related warnings for their website:

Jhu.edu

26th March 2015 - Pre update
J.H.U. was ranking well and had strong mobile and desktop visibility.

24th April 2015 - A couple of days after the update
The update hit and the non-mobile friendly nature of the site took its toll; J.H.U. lost a large amount of mobile visibility.

1st May 2015 - Turn of the month
Mobile visibility seemed to rise strongly.

13th May 2015 - Unlucky for some?
Mobile visibility dropped again for J.H.U. here, but I think this is just a couple of SERP anomalies while the turbulence of Google's Mobile Friendly update continues to ripple through the mobile search-space. I expect the early May mobile visibility gains to return soon.

Overall impact of mobile friendly so far
J.H.U. addressed the non-mobile friendly nature of their website:

The site seems to have a nice new responsive design, it looks really great. It's likely that the most recent drop in J.H.U's mobile visibility is a temporary fluctuation. This is an example of a site which lost visibility during the Mobile Friendly update and then re-gained it.

Primark

26th March 2015 - Pre update
Here Primark had really strong mobile and desktop visibility.

24th April 2015 - A couple of days after the update
Ouch! Primark got slammed heavily in terms of both mobile and desktop visibility.

1st May 2015 - Turn of the month
Primark recovered here.

13th May 2015 - Unlucky for some?
The recovery looks stable to date.

Overall impact of mobile friendly so far
Primark started out with mobile usability issues. Once the Mobile Friendly update hit, Primark lost rankings across both desktop and mobile. Just like with ASDA, I expect that there was something else going on here (either negative SEO activity or a Google glitch).

Primark heeded Google's advice; their site (at least the homepage) is now considered mobile friendly:

Primark's desktop and mobile rankings recovered almost immediately as they reacted and addressed Google's concerns. It's hard to say whether Mobile Friendly was behind their huge dip in visibility on April 24th (since desktop rankings also fell), but the timing shows a strong correlation.

So what was the overall impact of mobile friendly

In SEO we can never be 100% certain when divining the impact of specific events, this is due to so much going on simultaneously. Even so, here are some general observations from the data:

• Sites that addressed Googles concerns tended not to be hit, or they actively benefitted from the Mobile Friendly update (like American Airlines)
• Sites with mobile concerns which ignored Google's suggestions were hit, hit harder or failed to benefit from the update
• Brands which reacted faster seemed to recover faster or were not hit by the update
• SERP turbulence during the update caused one or two anomalies in the data (and thus graphs) but hopefully this was explained in enough detail within each relevant section of this analysis
• Some brands which did address the update (like Boots) didn't see any significant lift in mobile visibility. This is likely due to the fact that the mobile portion of those sites may be noticeably smaller than the desktop portion (in terms of content)
• If your mobile site is really small (even if it's very well optimised) when relatively compared to your desktop site, you probably won't have seen strong mobile visibility gains after Google's Mobile Friendly update
That's all for now, thanks for reading!

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