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A MAJOR UPDATE to Google’s search rankings for mobile sites could slice traffic to the websites for thousands of businesses in Ireland.
From tomorrow, in a move which has been labelled “mobilegeddon” for many SMEs, the search giant’s algorithms will favour sites optimised for mobile devices and bump those with poorly-tweaked websites in its results. The changes won’t affect desktop sites.
Itai Sadan, the head of US-based site builders Duda, told Business Insider small businesses would probably be hit the hardest with the changes because they were the least likely to know about them.
“Google has always been about relevancy, and content is king – but that’s changing,” he said.
Yes, they’re saying content is still extremely important, but user experience is just as important. It’s not sufficient to have all the right content — if people come to your site and the content is there but it’s not readable, that’s not good.”
The change was first announced in February and the company has released a tool for testing how mobile-friendly sites are on elements like automatically correcting the size of pages to fit device screens and having large, easy-to-read text.
The tech company’s Googlebot will also declare sites mobile-friendly if they avoid software plug-ins like Flash that many devices don’t support.
Google, which the European Commission recently charged with abusing its power as the overwhelmingly dominant search engine, has about 92% of the total search market in Europe.
Almost half of all Google search traffic in the US comes from mobile devices.
Not well connected
Meanwhile, a survey out today from IEDR, the company which manages Ireland’s .ie domain registry, revealed a large share of the country’s SMEs were poorly-equipped to cope with the changes – or make the most of the digital marketplace.
Of the two-thirds of the businesses that had websites, 54% used designs which weren’t suited to tablets and smartphones.
Only 9% of all SME sites were able to fully process sales online, while 68% were unable to take payments.
The company has launched the €150,000 OPTIMISE fund to help local enterprises to improve their websites and e-commerce offerings.
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All the 8th amendment does is harm women’s health. Replace it with legislation that treats pregnant women and girls as autonomous humans, not Tupperware containers. The rally for lies this Saturday will be interesting.
@DaisyChainsaw: I find these, while no doubt well meaning, a tad disturbing in that the more options and recommendations that are made, the more they’ll cherry pick from and ignore but still be able to quite legitimately say they followed the advice of the Citizens’ Assembly.
That all makes sense. Hopefull the Oireachtas implements the recommendations of the report.
@Daithí Ó Coinnigh: Kenny announced when the Assembly delivered not what was wanted (by the politicians in government) that there was another committee to be set up and ‘consider’ the Assmbly’s output – i.e. Water it down or even better – drag it into a dark alley, ignore it and bull ahead regardless.
Let women determine their own treatment options – NOT politicians!!!
If you’re going to explain the word consensus, don’t do so incorrectly. Consensus is where you arrive at something acceptable to all or the vast majority. Thus, these recommendations are acceptable to the vast majority of the assembly.
Are we going to need new jumpers with REPLACE on them instead?
@Fiachrá Ó Dubhthaigh: repealing and then creating legislation for this is the best way.
Ireland’s obsession with referendums for everything really needs to stop, the only way this can stop is us stopping adding everything to the constitution even when it doesn’t need to be in it.
Repeal! It’s their choice. We are all human and I have no right to tell another human how to live.
@Nicholas J Campbell: we are all human and we ALL have a RIGHT to live.
Just bring it in, make it available for anyone who plans on having one & get it over with.
Nicholas we are all human and we all have a RIGHT to live
There still wasting taxpayer money !
Women are tax payers too and their health deserve to be properly looked after
Nicholasjcampbell we are all human and we ALL have a right to live
The first thing I have to say is “When did 25% become a consensus”. The second thing is ” I believe that the Citizens Assembly is one of the most sexist groups I’ve ever come across. Have men and boys not got an equal right to control over their reproduction . Or any ! This assembly is so biased that it didn’t even mention condoms for boys and men.
This article is either poorly written, or the Citizen’s Assembly was all over the shop.
“These recommendations were arrived at via a consensus (ie a majority were in agreement) of the members’ responses.”
and then
“Between 15 and 20 members calling for a recommendation (roughly 25%) was taken to be consensus.”
If the latter is what they viewed as a consensus, then the must have only a cursory relationship with a dictionary.
“usually in singular: A general agreement.”
have your say