By Eric Groves
It’s been widely reported in the press that this week’s changes by Google were going to “Crush SMBs.” Our research suggests that may have been a bit of an exaggeration. The wide scale coverage did raise a ton of awareness about the importance of having a mobile friendly website, but it turns out that most SMBs may already be in great shape.
Survey of SMBs suggest most business feel well prepared for “MobileGeddon”
Our survey of Alignable users to get their feedback found that of the 345 respondents over 80 percent reported their websites to be “mobile friendly.”
Confusion still exists over what “Mobile Friendly” means
We then ran the websites of our poll takers through Google’s free Website grader and found that 10 percent of those who believed their websites to be “mobile friendly” actually did not pass muster and roughly 5 percent of those who believed their websites not to be mobile friendly were.
Random sample of 1,000 SMBs on Alignable
In order to complete the analysis we also selected a random sample of 1,000 SMB websites from our tens of thousands of SMB members and found that 60% passed the Google “mobile friendly” test.
Opportunity exists
While widely billed as “MobileGeddon,” it seems like the majority of SMB owners aren’t going to be as adversely impacted by Google’s change as we were all led to believe. It was also terrific of Google to provide a simple way to test your own site and provide simple instructions on how to fix your site if it got rejected.
According to our users, website providers like GoDaddy were doing a terrific job remedying any issues that were found while helping customers deliver a great mobile website experience.
Kudos to Google for getting the word out early and helping SMBs stay found!
Have you tested your website yet? Test it with Google’s tool here.
If you didn’t pass, don’t despair! Here’s some guidance for going mobile: Don’t Panic! Resources for making your website mobile-friendly for Google.
Eric Groves is the co-founder and CEO of Alignable, the free online network where local businesses and organizations connect and collaborate with others nearby. Eric has been a local marketing expert and enthusiast since 2001, authored The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing, and believes that local businesses are always stronger together. Follow them at @Alignable.
