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Is your website AMP’ed? If it is you most certainly know that I am talking about Accelerated Mobile Pages, and Google loves them.
If you are not, it is relatively easy to create an AMP page template for your HTML website. Just follow some of these links to learn more and to see examples.
As AMP’ed websites are important from Google viewpoint and Google is actively showing AMP pages in the mobile index, it is important to know and understand why your website needs to embrace AMP now.
Expect the unexpected and stay secure even on your mobile devices.
Recently my husband’s identity was stolen and my access to our bank account was hacked.
In my husband’s case a credit card was opened in his name.
In my case my online bank user name, password and PIN was used to raise credit limits and then steal over $3,000 from our checking account.
Our bank took care of the matter, but what was problematic was just how robbers got access to my own personal online access information.
The only thing we can think of is that I was using mobile banking features and may have accessed my bank while I was connected away from my home base.
As a result, here are the things that I have done to improve my mobile security.
1. My entire family now uses on their mobile devices face or voice recognition biometrics to access our most important bank. For our other bank, we use two step verification. All family members use two step verification via text messages to smartphones to access bank accounts online through desktops.
2. My entire family now has withdrawal, deposit and transaction alerts set up for banking, savings accounts, and credit cards. The focus is to catch robbers early before too much damage has been done.
3. I personally am using NordVPN which is a subscription base security tool for my smartphone that encrypts my communication on mobile data or when I am connected to any Wi-Fi hotspots out of my office. This will be especially important to me as I will be traveling in the months to come and this secure tunnel will allow me to encrypt data I exchange on the internet, geomask my location as well as to prevent eavesdroppers from snatching my user names and passwords.
Stay safe when you are online with your smartphone and encourage your family members to embrace new levels of mobile security to prevent the headaches that happened to us.
If you don’t want to move to a subscription service for security, Opera has just announced a free VPN for smartphones that is very simple to use. You can download it at Google Play or iTunes.
Tell me you haven’t seen it yourself? The space on Google and Bing for organic results is shrinking again. Have you looked on your smartphone? Could you even find organic results when the page loades?
The amazing shrinking world of organic search results on mobile
Searchengine Land just wrote about this issue complete with screen shots in this article. They highlighted a travel query with no space left at all for organic search results on a mobile device.
In Google Analytics I am seeing many clients have shrinking organic traffic numbers as both Google and Bing revamp their results displays to show more ads, bigger ads, and on mobile fewer organic results.
On desktops the organic results were already being pushed nearly below the fold by the Google Knowledge Graph and Google Carousel and the six pack of Google Local results. On mobile the space is even more precious. It is not unusual to see only ads when the screen opens, then local results and only with significant scrolling any organic results.
For more information about the changing face of organic results read my blog post about the Google Knowledge Graph and Google Carousel from 2014. The space was shrinking then and now appears to be nearly gone in some new searches.
I read an article with interest this last week that laid out a very compelling case for the death of search engines. You can read the full article called “Is Search, As We Know It, Dying?”
The key takeaway that I have seen on my own is that the increased used of mobile devices is turning the regular world of search upside down. Consider on Google AdWords – activity in mobile means increased website traffic, more clicks, but does not translate into more conversions.
As mobile activity has increased in Google AdWords, computer activity has decreased and with it conversions, time on page, and the bounce rate has increased.
Google and Bing continue to scramble to make search meaningful for smartphone users by introducing interactive maps with ads but users are looking for other resources via apps to get the information they want.
Just consider how searches for hotels, venues, and restaurants has changed. Trip Advisor is a great example of how a mobile app is replacing traditional search for smartphone users.
Just yesterday I needed a round tablecloth, I did not search on Google, but rather started my search directly on Amazon.com.
With Google and Bing getting pressure to keep their search audience and websites like Amazon and mobile apps like Trip Advisor stepping in to provide targeted quality search results, we may be seeing the demise of traditional search engines in the next three to five years and maybe even sooner.
For more about me, Nancy McCord, and McCord Web Services, please visit our website at www.McCordWeb.com.
