Mobilegeddon: The New Page-Rank Movement
On April 21, 2015, Google released an update to its well-known PageRank algorithm – a new page ranking system geared towards encouraging mobile-friendly websites. Soon after, Bing announced a similar move to improve search ratings for responsive web pages. With the mobile sector taking over the tech industry, it appears that more and more companies are participating in this movement coined as the “mobilegeddon”. The “mobilegeddon” confirms the longstanding belief that mobile usage is surpassing computer usage. Most notably, more Google searches are occurring on mobile devices than computers nowadays, leading to a push for more mobile-friendly interfaces.
Previously, Google’s PageRank algorithm largely depended on the number of links leading to a page to determine page importance. This system aligns with the topics covered in lecture and in the textbook detailing link analysis in web search. In particular, Chapter 14 of the textbook states that a high page rank corresponds to a large number of in-links pointing to that particular page. This approach focuses on the use of hub scores and authority scores along with the Basic PageRank Update Rule to rank pages that are most relevant to a query. Even in the mobile context, such a system makes sense because mobile-friendly sites generally provide only the most important information, which in many cases, tends to be the links to another page. However, Google’s new criteria of labelling pages as either mobile-friendly or not adds another layer of complexity to the page ranking algorithm.
With the new system, a website with a mobile-friendly label gains more authority, helping to improve its rank in the search engine. On the other hand, Google also penalizes websites without the mobile-friendly tag, in an attempt to force these web pages to move towards a more responsive design. Meanwhile, Bing claims to present the most relevant results for a higher ranked search query, regardless of its mobile-friendliness. Even so, Bing’s placement of the mobile-friendly label in the front as shown below indicates the advantage of mobile-friendly websites in the ranking competition.
Overall, this algorithm change demonstrates the immense effect that pagerank has on people all around the world. The class textbook claims that web search illustrates the game-theoretic principle that the world will react as expected to one’s actions, with people adjusting their web pages to maximize their ranking scores. Today, the idea of search engine optimization (SEO), using specific techniques to improve a page’s position in search engine rankings, has become widely popular. In fact, for many people and businesses, having a high rank in web search is crucial to success and financial stability. Thus, with Google and Bing’s new update to their page ranking systems, it is likely that more and more companies will start developing mobile-friendly sites over the next few years. After all, page rankings greatly influence information retrieval and shape the way people perceive the data and news around them.
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