Catchpoint Systems undertook an experiment to see to what extent, if any, performance issues such as site speed and availability are being factored into Google?s new mobile-driven criteria for ranking search results. A key finding was that in addition to favoring whether or not a site page is mobile friendly, the search rankings favor pages for which the base HTML loads faster. 

?The factor of whether your site or page is mobile friendly actually impacted both mobile and desktop the same way,? said Drit Suljoti, chief product officer at Catchpoint Systems Inc., New York.

?If you are a marketer and your pages are not coded to be mobile friendly, don?t be surprised if you are being impacted on desktop,? he said. ?That is a lesson that everybody needs to wake up to, whether they have mobile users or not, they need to make sure their pages are responsive at least.?

In a well-hyped move, Google?s began factoring mobile friendliness into its mobile search rankings on April 21, meaning that marketers with sites that fail to render an easy-to-navigate experience on mobile could expect to lose their top placement in search results. 

With some sites showing roughly 50 percent or greater skew towards mobile traffic, the implications could be a significant loss of traffic, causing some to refer to the change as mobilegeddon. 

Catchpoint Systems findings suggest that the impact of these changes is not simply being felt on mobile searching rankings but across desktop searches as well. This means there is even more pressure on marketers to take a mobile-first approach to search marketing, even if they do not have a large mobile audience. 

The findings also point to the importance that Google is placing on mobile. 

For the research, Catchpoint created 36 different pages of unique content, each with one of 12 very unique keywords, to ensure that a mobile search for the word would generate only three results.

 

There were three instances of each keyword, and these versions were given different design elements, such as mobile-friendly and non mobile-friendly. They were also artificially slowed down, in different combinations. 

After running the tests for a three-day period, Catchpoint Systems found that a mobile-friendly page, which scales to the size of the screen on which it is being viewed, is favored in Google?s search rankings over a page that does not scale.

Additionally, a page for which the base HTML loads faster from the server is favored over one that loads one second slower.

Search rankings?
There was no discernable impact on search rankings when a Javascript request on one of the pages was slowed down by three seconds.  

The rankings were exactly the same across both desktop and mobile searches.

However, a mobile-friendly site will always appear higher in mobile search rankings compared to a non mobile-friendly site, even if the non mobile-friendly site is faster. 

A key takeaway is that mobile-friendly design is in fact the top criteria for determining mobile search ranking.

Additionally, Catchpoint Systems found no evidence that the performance of a site?s desktop version would be factored into mobile search rankings. It did find evidence that mobile responsiveness is being factored into rankings for searches conducted on desktops. 

?The non mobile-friendly site was always last, no matter what,? Mr. Suljoti said. ?The ones that were always mobile friendly were always number one and number two with our results. 

The findings suggest that marketers need to make sure that their Web pages are mobile friendly. This could mean adopting either responsive Web design or adaptive design. 

What is not clear from these findings is how having an m dot site impacts search rankings. 

Marketers also need to make sure that their page HTML is loading as fast as possible. 

?You can do responsive or adaptive - the end result for Google is going to be the same,? Mr. Suljoti said. 

?It is still up for a question if you go for a mobile-only site,? he said. ?That could possible have an impact because Google is still looking at your www site and if your www site is not adapting to screen size, you are going to be penalized.?