April's much-anticipated Google mobile update has adversely affected some small businesses even though many of them had already optimised their websites for mobile, according to new research.
A survey of 1,000 UK SMEs by Koozai has revealed confusion and concern amongst many businesses at the inconsistent and unpredictable impact the update had caused.
Fears of a devastating "mobilegeddon" appear to be unfounded but many businesses have experienced small unexplained drops in organic rankings and traffic even though they have optimised their websites for mobile.
The survey found that 76% of firms said the suggestion the update would cause "mobilegeddon" and that websites would disappear completely from mobile search results was "overhyped, incorrect and unhelpful".
However, 42% of businesses said they had experienced changes to their rankings or traffic as a result of the Google update. Of these, 39% had seen a drop in rankings by at least three places and had noticed a drop in traffic as a result. And 22% had seen a drop in rankings even though they had optimised for mobile.
A significant number of SMEs in the survey were unsure about the relationship between mobile and desktop searches, with 56% revealing they didn't know if sales on their desktops sites had initially come from visitors viewing their website on mobile.
Ben Norman, ceo of Koozai, said: "The hype that the Google mobile update would cause carnage in the search engine rankings missed the larger picture. Exaggerating the impact meant that businesses didn't anticipate that even small changes in their ranking can have an big impact on their organic mobile search results."
Mobile optimisation is complex, said Norman. He said: "With more than 200 Google ranking factors, many businesses may have dropped in the organic search results when a competitor optimised for mobile because they were better optimised for some of these other ranking factors."
Norman also highlighted what he called a "worrying lack of understanding in the SME community of ecommerce analytics". He said: "Many consumers today will research on mobile then go on to purchase on desktop. Many SMEs are missing out on these lead creation opportunities if they don't know if their ecommerce sites aren't giving their potential customers a good experience on mobile."