Ask the Wrong Question, Get the Wrong Answer

The headline was mildly disappointing, but nowhere near surprising:

Some Small Business Websites Are Still Not Mobile

The article, published yesterday, covers the results of a "last year's" survey, compared to results from "last year's" "last year's" survey.  And it borders on disheartening.

Let me be clear.  I respect the publisher of this information.  That's why I get their articles in my email.  They, along with a few others, are my "go to sources" for what's going on in mobile marketing.  But even those who are "on top of it" generally have no control over exactly what "it" is that they're "on top of".

It's their sources that provided 7-month-old data, compared to 19-month-old data.  And before you say "things take time" you should know that "last year's" survey,

polled 400 US small businesses...

Two multi-million dollar, international companies, and they didn't even as the right questions.

"Last year's" survey celebrated that 52% said their website is mobile-optimized; that 14% built mobile-optimized emails; and 11% market with SMS. That's the good news.

The bad news is that "mobile-optimized" hadn't been enough for "the mobile web" for six months - count 'em, 6, - before that.

Once you-know-who decided to change their algorithms to look for "mobile first", it pretty much ceased to matter that a snippet of code could make your entire (designed for desktop) home page appear on a 2.5" x 3.5" mobile screen.  

And, while I'm sure it's true that you-know-who isn't "penalizing" websites that are "mobile-optimized" but not "mobile first", their algorithms are going to find the most exact match to what they're looking for: websites designed to be easy to view, and easy to navigate "on-the-go", on a 2.5" x 3.5" mobile screen, first; a 7" x 9" tablet screen next; websites designed to still look good on desktop.

Because *they* - you-know-who - know just how "mobile" we as a society have become.  

They know - and announced at approximately the same time that the "last year's" survey compared results from "last year's" "last year's" survey, that

More than 50% of local searches happen on mobile devices.

For more on how “Marketers” neither consider nor write for local businesses, click here, here, and here.