Google Latest Algorithmic Change about Https & Mobile Friendliness
-
How effective did it prove for anyone with the latest algorithmic change google search engine made for being mobile friendly and using https (valid ssl certificate). I see a good change being made under the ecommerce category for sites being used for online shopping. Let me know if anyone observes a major difference.
-
Looks like the question is legitimate and has generated some good discussion, but I've gone ahead and removed those links.
-
Is this not spam? It has contextual links that have nothing to do with the topic. We get these all the time on the forum I help manage.
-
Mobile friendliness does impact the search rankings but specifically on mobile platforms. You can see a quite apparent difference in rankings in desktop search and mobile search for same keywords. So, if you rank high in desktop searches doesn't guarantee high rankings in mobile searches as well if you don't have a mobile friendly website.
As far as HTTPS is concerned so it has nothing to do with your search rankings, it is just make your website secure. So, if you accept online payments, you should go with SSL to keep your website secure and safe. However, as Tom Roberts mentioned, you might see some drops in rankings while you migrate your website to SSL due to migration technicalities
-
Normally Google is making changes to their algorithm and it's SEOs who are trying to convince you that certain changes are beneficial. But full-site SSL is the exact reverse. Google says it's a (small) ranking factor and SEOs are the ones remaining to be convinced. Nobody has proven any kind of serious boost and I'm still dubious that it's a good decision from a pure SEO standpoint.
If you want to do your own experiment, use Cloudflare. It can serve up a SSL version of your site without a certificate (and thus free) and you can do your own test to see if full SSL is worth it to you without having to make any serious configuration changes (and you can always turn it off if you want)
-
Hi Joshua
From personal experience (won't cite external sources here) working with a number of sites:
The mobile friendly update - I've definitely seen an impact in mobile search. I think there's quite a clear handicap in mobile search if the webpage you're trying to rank for isn't mobile friendly (while desktop search looks to be unaffected).
Regarding SSL - I'm yet to be convinced. I've yet to see a strong correlation - or any correlation for that matter - between websites switching to HTTPS and seeing their rankings improved. I've followed my own sites, competitor sites, and industry trackers like SerpWoo on this and I don't think the impact is quite there (yet). In fact, I've seen more cases of companies migrating to SSL seeing rankings drop than improve, because of the problems they have faced in the migration.
In short:
Mobile Friendly - I do see this as a must for SEO.
SSL - treat it as a business decision, not an SEO one. If you're looking to integrate an onsite payment solution, for example, it makes sense for the site to be SSL.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How long does google take to re-ranking pages in results?
I mean when google dance, the pages in results go up and down frequency every minue, but finally your page will rank in any position in google, what is the time when you get another position in google
Algorithm Updates | | engtamous0 -
Time lag between algorithm changes and results?
Hi everyone, We had pretty good organic traffic growth for the past 3 years. Some people in our organization think that we were probably affected positively by the algorithm changes (Panda, Penguin,...). When I plot the dates on a chart I think Panda had no effect, but we had big gains starting five months after Penguin 1. Do you think the effect could have come that much later ? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | jfmonfette0 -
Next big Google update. Andy ideas when?
I'm interested to find out if anyone has and idea of when it will be or good guesses I would be interested to hear your thoughts. I have put a big effort into an SEO upgrade on my site and I'm interested in what impact I can expect when the next big update comes. Assuming I have fixed the issues that had been causing my traffic drop.
Algorithm Updates | | mark_baird0 -
Server Location & SEO
So I just read an interesting Tweet: #SEO Tip: #Google takes into account the location of the server (the IP) when projecting the search results #web This is something I had not thought of. I suppose my question then is HOW does it factor this information into it's results? For some reason, one of our sites is hosted on a Canadian server. We are a cloud hosting company and we serve all of NA with data centers in the US and Canada... For whatever reason we've used the Canadian server farm for our web server. Could this possibly be hurting our NA google SERPs? Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Algorithm Updates | | jesse-landry0 -
Google site links on sub pages
Hi all Had a look for info on this one but couldn't find much. I know these days that if you have a decent domain good will often automatically put site links on for your home if someone searches for your company name, however has anyone seen these links appear for sub pages? For example, lets say I had a .com domain with /en /fr /de sub folders, each seoed for their location. If I were to then have domain.com/en/ as no1 in Google for my company in the UK would I be able to get site links under this or does it only work on the 'proper' homepage domain.com/ A client of mine wants to reorganise their website so they have different location sections ranking in different markets but they also want to keep having sitewide links as they like the look of it Thanks Carl
Algorithm Updates | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Google Update?
We have a website that for the past several weeks has been very consistent at between 13,500 and 14,200 daily visits and this site received 15,600 last Thursday. THIS week, Monday is at 22,200, Tuesday is at 26,200, and at mid-day today (at about our traffic halfway point in the day) we're already at 14,000 today. This was a site that was bringing about 14,000 visits as of May 16th last year and dropped to 11,000 the following week. The traffic to this site this week is so far beyond statistical analysis that there must have been something that happened.
Algorithm Updates | | sourcelinemedia0 -
Data on Google Vs Bing, et al and changes to sites.
I am curious to know if anyone has any data that correlates site/page changes like content or Title Tag, H1, etc. and subsequent movement in rankings on Google and Bing and Yahoo? The equation is for example: ABCSite.com/home-page/ makes a change to the H1 and H2 and one paragraph of content is changed. Over next 6 to 12 weeks changes in page rank for the 3 engines is tracked to see where it started and where it "stopped." Obviously, there are more factors than individual algorithms in play here. An example of that would be that a significant number of sites will be indexed in Google by a dev and not in the others. We see this regularly. So, at least from a timing standpoint, different sites are entering/leaving the fray at different rates. We are going to begin to track this but I would love to see any data already around or speak with anyone involved in such a study about what they found. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | RobertFisher0 -
Penalty or Algorithm hit?
After the Google Algorithm was updated my site took a week hit in traffic. The traffic came back a week later and was doing well a week AFTER the algorithm change and I decided that I should do a 301 redirect to make sure I didn't have duplicate content (www. vs. http://) I called my hosting company (I won't name names but it rhymes w/ Low Fatty) and they guided me through the supposedly simple process.. Well, they had me create a new (different) IP address and do a domain forward (sorry about bad terminology) to the www. This was in effect for approximately 2 weeks before I discovered it and came along with a subsequent massive hit in traffic. I then corrected the problem (I hope) by restoring the old IP address and setting up the HTACESS file to redirect all to www. It is a couple weeks later and my traffic is still in the dumps. On WMT instead of getting traffic from 10,000 keywords I'm getting it only from 2k. Is my site the victim of some penalty (I have heard of sandbox) or is my site simply just lower in traffic due to the new algorithm (I checked analytics data to find that traffic only in the US is cut by 50%, it is the same outside the US) Could someone please tell me what is going on?
Algorithm Updates | | askthetrainer0
