Recruiters may trip up over Google’s mobile-friendly changes
15 April 2015
Recruiters could be heading for “mobilegeddon”, unaware of changes being made to Google search-ranking criteria that could bump them down the results page, recruitment marketing firm GKS Associates’ director Robert Woodford says.
Wed, 15 Apr 2015
Recruiters could be heading for “mobilegeddon”, unaware of changes being made to Google search-ranking criteria that could bump them down the results page, recruitment marketing firm GKS Associates’ director Robert Woodford says.Under changes announced earlier this year (26 February) by search engine Google, starting 21 April, more mobile-friendly websites will appear in search results.
“Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high-quality search results that are optimised for their devices,” a Google blog post read.
The search engine has already begun to use information from applications (apps) as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed, showing content from those apps more prominently in search results.
A GKS Associates poll of more than 100 recruitment firms found over two-thirds were unaware of the mobile-friendly changes.
Woodford said: “With only days to go most recruitment companies haven’t even heard about this change, let alone planned for it.”
While it was difficult to predict how many sites were suffering, a quick review by GKS Associates suggests it is a “sizeable majority”.
Multi-specialist recruiter FiveTen Group’s head of marketing Adam Nicoll was less concerned about the changes. He told Recruiter high-quality, relevant content on a website should out-rank mobile friendliness.
“These developments do not represent a penalisation of sites which are not mobile friendly; naturally, a site with the same content as the next site, which is more mobile-friendly than it, will fare better if all else is equal, but organic, rich and relevant content remains the key guiding principle of how Google ranks sites.
“If a desktop site has 400 marketing manager jobs on it, it would still trump a mobile website with 50 marketing manager jobs on it. Content remains king over device, unless Google are changing their guiding principles completely.”
And Woodford’s advice?
“The best thing to do is visit the Google Webmasters site to check the mobile-friendliness of your site. If Google says you’re fine, then sit back with a smug face. However, if it highlights problems with the site then you need to act quickly”.
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Recruiters could be heading for “mobilegeddon”, unaware of changes being made to Google search-ranking criteria that could bump them down the results page, recruitment marketing firm GKS Associates’ director Robert Woodford says.Under changes announced earlier this year (26 February) by search engine Google, starting 21 April, more mobile-friendly websites will appear in search results.
“Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high-quality search results that are optimised for their devices,” a Google blog post read.
The search engine has already begun to use information from applications (apps) as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed, showing content from those apps more prominently in search results.
A GKS Associates poll of more than 100 recruitment firms found over two-thirds were unaware of the mobile-friendly changes.
Woodford said: “With only days to go most recruitment companies haven’t even heard about this change, let alone planned for it.”
While it was difficult to predict how many sites were suffering, a quick review by GKS Associates suggests it is a “sizeable majority”.
Multi-specialist recruiter FiveTen Group’s head of marketing Adam Nicoll was less concerned about the changes. He told Recruiter high-quality, relevant content on a website should out-rank mobile friendliness.
“These developments do not represent a penalisation of sites which are not mobile friendly; naturally, a site with the same content as the next site, which is more mobile-friendly than it, will fare better if all else is equal, but organic, rich and relevant content remains the key guiding principle of how Google ranks sites.
“If a desktop site has 400 marketing manager jobs on it, it would still trump a mobile website with 50 marketing manager jobs on it. Content remains king over device, unless Google are changing their guiding principles completely.”
And Woodford’s advice?
“The best thing to do is visit the Google Webmasters site to check the mobile-friendliness of your site. If Google says you’re fine, then sit back with a smug face. However, if it highlights problems with the site then you need to act quickly”.
• Want to comment on this story? The Comment box is at the bottom of the page. Sorry for the glitch but just scroll right down and share your opinions!
