A new study into US SMEs has revealed widespread confusion about Google's mobile-friendly update - and indignation at the hype surrounding it.
In the survey by Koozai, 69% of participants said the suggestion that the update would cause 'mobilegeddon' was "overhyped, incorrect and unhelpful".
In the weeks leading up to launch, the digital marketing community was breathless in its reporting. Even the mainstream press joined in, with the Guardian reporting the update as the "biggest change in two years" and predicting that we "could see turmoil in search rankings".
Google wasn't exactly blameless in its handling of the hype-factory, either - in March, a Google employee was quoted as saying the update was going to have a wider impact than Panda or Penguin, the search engine's famously disruptive webspam algorithms.
Journalistic grumbles aside, the study found that nearly half (46%) of survey respondents had seen ranking or traffic changes as a result of the update, with 41% saying that they had seen ranking drops of at least three places.
27% of respondents had seen a drop in rankings even though they believed their sites were mobile optimised, while around 12% were unsure whether their sites were even mobile-friendly.
For the study, Koozai questioned 2,000 business across the United States with 50 or fewer employees.
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