Today there are more than 7,000 million people and a total of 6,100 million smartphones connected to the Internet. On average, 60% or 70% of website visitors do so from a mobile device. We look at our phones an average of 74 times a day (300 times Millennials and, if we talk about Gen Z, the number would be increasing).
Google has taken note of this trend and is acting accordingly. Consider that we are in the Mobile-First era, that is, to decide which website appears first in the results of your search engine, it analyzes the web as if all users were viewing it from a smartphone. And when users browse from their smartphone, what bothers them the most is that it takes longer to load, in fact, more than 53% of users will abandon the page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Therefore, the loading speed of a website is the criterion that Google considers most important.
From time to time Google updates its algorithms, which are responsible for deciding which website appears in the results of a search and in what position. And only a few weeks ago Google has applied a draft update that has affected practically all websites, causing important position changes. This is known as “SERP volatility”, the index of how positions change or dance in Google results.
Many websites that had been in top positions for a long time have fallen overnight, and others that struggled to be in top positions, have finally succeeded. Obviously, Google looks at many parameters to decide who comes first, but in the latest update of its algorithm, there are two factors that stand out above the rest: the loading speed of the web on mobile devices and good quality content and well structured.
And you? Do you know how this change has affected the positioning of your company’s website?
