CMO.com has an article outlining the price paid by companies who haven’t updated their sites to support mobile. They are making reference to the fact that Google updates their algorithms to give preference to sites that support mobile vs those that don’t.
Indeed, companies that weren’t ready for the so-called “Mobilegeddon” have lost up to 10% of traffic, according to ADI.
“While there wasn’t a precipitous drop among non-friendly sites, the effect is pronounced over the 10 weeks after the event,” said Tamara Gaffney, principal at ADI. “Such continued loss of traffic suggests that immediate emphasis would have been placed on paid search as a quick way to recover traffic. But that strategy is not necessarily sustainable.”
10% is a big number these days and while not as significant as the change Google made late last year to give preference to sites that more regularly update their content, it’s still a big deal. Notice that they reference “continued” loss. In other words, Google just made a bad trend worse. But that trend was still there. It’s become a mobile world and if you don’t support it, you become less an annoyance and more someone people won’t visit………
The CMO.com article also goes into detail on impact to ad revenue for Google based on a per click model rather than number of ads per page. It’s worth reading to gain some insight.