Google's New Search Algorithm: A Lot Of It's About Facebook
Google today is unveiling a new search algorithm that will help sites that have mobile-friendly design and that hurts sites that don't. If a site requires people to pinch-and-zoom, it's going to be demoted in the rankings when people search on their phones.
Why is Google doing this? It's partly about users. As everyone knows, we now spend more of our time on mobile phones than we do on desktop computers. (That shift has been coming for a while.) Google wants to serve search results that make mobile users happy, and it wants to provide an incentive to Websites to prioritize mobile design. Google could have made this change quietly, but they made it loudly so that web developers would pay attention. If you're a web developer who knows mobile design, now is a good time to update your LinkedIn profile.
Naturally, there's money at stake for Google. The happier that people are with mobile searches, the more mobile searches they'll make, which means the more money Google will make. Last year, Google's revenues from desktop search actually declined. More time spent searching also means, for lots of folks, more time spent using Android or Chrome, which helps Google gather data and make money.
But another way to look at this is as a continuation of Google's struggle against Facebook. To oversimplify, the Internet is essentially divided into two worlds: there's the walled garden of Facebook and there's the open Web, which is largely organized by Google. When you spend time inside of Facebook, you're probably not using Google products except for maybe Android. And people are spending more and more time inside of Facebook and the company is making more and more revenue from them. Google still has massively more revenue than Facebook, but the social network is rapidly catching up, particularly on mobile devices.
So that's another way to look at this change: it's about making users happy, it's about improving the web, it's about making money for Google, and it's yet another battle in the long, fascinating conflict between Google and Facebook.
I spoke about this topic this morning with Charlie Rose, Gayle King, Norah O'Donnell and CBS This Morning.
Systems Administrator
9 年It will only output mobile-friendly websites in search results if you are googling from mobile device. So there wont be surprise like "flash plugin required", but instead it wont be available in results at all.
Principal Managing Consultant | Machine Learning Engineer | Data Science | AI Startups | Generative AI @ TCG, LLC | Mentor Post-Graduate AIFL | Risk Solutions & Management | AI Use Cases Post-graduate | AI Upskilling
9 年Presentation of search results and platform recognition are key factors for Googles new algorithm! A few faults I have experienced in setting up of business website(s) and performing searches are the distortions of formatted window and nonfunctional features of mobile applications. Formatting between social media platforms remain a major problem for business websites.
Partly retired at Self Employed
9 年Very interesting. For sure, we all need to get on the mobile band wagon. Don't tell me it's finally time for me to get an iPhone.
Surely the algorithm should adjust depending on where you are searching from? If I'm searching from my phone I prefer a mobile friendly site, if I'm searching on my desktop I really don't care if a site is mobile friendly or not. In fact I often prefer mobile unfriendly sites, since they tend to look better on desktop! It also depends on how well Google's crawlers can detect and change between versions of websites. Most good sites will server different pages depending on whether the browser identifies itself as a mobile browser or not.
Senior Digital Producer
9 年I think mobile use is far more used for people 'on the go.' But when I need to sort my taxes, transfer money from bank accounts to another etc the stuff I class as the "important serious" stuff... I want to be sat down and focused, and that tends to be at a desktop. Mobile use seems to be more about brief browsing, time filling and getting emails etc sent out on the move. I think desktop will remain largely the place where people get the main parts of their work and life "done".