On April 21st of this year Google will update its Search Algorithm in a drastic way. This update is in response to the staggering growth of mobile traffic online. Google says 43% of its Search Traffic comes from mobile devices, and the speed of this growth is impressive. This means we are headed to a tipping point where more internet traffic takes place on mobile devices than anywhere else.

This is a deviation from the way Google updates its Search Algorithm – usually the changes are not announced, happen almost daily (sometimes several times a day), and are figured out by SEO gurus after the fact. This is naturally a tedious process that relies on empirical evidence that is constantly altered by other unknown parts of Google’s search algorithm, so figuring out something concretely is quite a challenge. So, this time Google is giving us a heads up – make sure your site is mobile, or you will be penalized.

What does this mean for a small business? If you rely on the internet to generate leads for your business, this means a lot. You absolutely need a mobile website. And a complete one at that, not just a couple of mobile landing pages for the smartphones – your whole site, its structure, and its content, need to be reflected in the mobile version of your website.

Even if your website relies solely on Desktop traffic, you will still see a drop in your rankings there without a mobile website. It is important to remember that this affects all search results, not just those done on mobile phones.

After the 21st we will report on the changes that actually took place because of this Google algorithm upgrade.