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Here’s all you need to know about Mobilegeddon

Google is changing a key search algorithm behind it search function to favor mobile friendly sites.

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Sonal Desai
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MUMBAI, INDIA: Starting tomorrow, Google will roll-out an update to its search algorithm.

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The move is seen by some as Google’s effort to capture the vast potential of mobile commerce or m-commerce, where as a larger diaspora looks at it as a penalty toward mobile unfriendly websites.

So what exactly is Mobilegeddon?

As mentioned above, Google is changing a key search algorithm behind it search function to favor mobile friendly sites. Irked analysts and competition have termed the move as Mobilegeddon!!!

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While Google maintains that the change will not affect tablet or desktop searches, Mobilegeddon will impact the search rankings of many websites that are not mobile friendly, the analysts opine.

But Google, as early as November 2014, did provide a glimpse into its Mobilegeddon strategy, when Ryoichi Imaizumi and Doantam Phan, Google Mobile Search, titled, Helping users find mobile-friendly pages, the duo wrote, “We see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience. We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.”

What can be the impact?

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As a result, if Google does not consider a website to be mobile of smart phone friendly, it will plummet down the search results.

According to various analysts globally, Google will plummet the websites whose:

· Alphabets are smaller in text and are uncomfortable to read on a smart phone

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· Links are placed too close together for touch screens

Some of the non-compliant sites include Nintendo UK, Windows Phone, Next, as well as the official website of the SNP, the British Monarchy and the European Union.

Back home in India, the move can boost hundreds of thousands of start-ups and SMBs who are leveraging latest technologies to connect with the mobile-savvy generation next. The established businesses, who are already penning a mobile-first strategy, will certainly now have to bear the new Dos and Don’ts before designing the aesthetics of their new websites.

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The market potential in India:

India, the second largest smart phone market globally, and also considered one of the world's fastest growing Internet markets, is expected to see rise in the number of tablets to more than 18 million by 2019, according to the analyst firm Visual Networking Index (VNI).

According to the report: "In India, the number of smart phones grew 54 percent during 2014, reaching 140 million in number and the number will grow 4.7-fold between 2014 and 2019, reaching 651 million."

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The number of tablets grew 1.7-fold during 2014, reaching 2.03 million in number and is expected to grow 9.2-fold between 2014 and 2019, reaching 18.7 million, it added.

There were 590.3 million (47 percent of India's population) mobile users in 2014, up 18 percent from 500 million in 2013, and will increase to 859.6 million in 2019," the VNI report noted.

By 2019, there will be around 11.5 billion mobile-ready devices/connections, including 8.3 billion personal mobile devices and 3.2 billion M2M (machine 2 machine) connections (up from 7.4 billion total mobile-ready devices and M2M connections in 2014), it said.

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Meanwhile, Accusing Google of unfair trade practices for financial gains, the European Union has filed anti-trust charges against the search giant.

The EU has alleged that Google’s search engine fives favorable treatment to Google Shopping, its price-comparison service.

Lastly, Google has launched a website which allows users to put their site to the test and find out whether or not it is mobile friendly.

Tell us:

Do you think Mobileggedon will play a spoil sport in the burgeoning start-up and the SMB ecosystem?

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