Mobilegeddon Announced - Which Website to Choose, Dedicated or Responsive

Google lately announced, Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. With the announcement of mobile search update, there are several webmasters who are confused whether to go for a dedicated mobile site or a responsive web design. A dedicated mobile website is designed to be opened on mobile phones only. On the other hand responsive web designs are compatible with various devices like mobiles, laptops, tablets etc. Are you wondering with "Mobilegeddon" Announced - Which Website to Choose, Dedicated or Responsive? Read to know some revelations made by Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst, and find answer!

Pros Cons of Mobile Sites

• Can be customized
• Are inexpensive
• Are easy to design
• Are subject to recurring maintenance
• Updating content of many mobile websites means incurring high expenditure

To make them compatible with future browsers, the sites would have to be reworked

Pros Cons of Responsive Web Design

• Importance Of Responsive Website Design is expounded by the fact that Google, the most popular search engine recommends the configuration
• Less expenditure spent as a single site has to be maintained for several devices
• No modifications have to be made in the site to make it compatible with future browsers
• Designing is cost

Some Facts Unveiled

• There is no ranking benefit associated with responsive design
• If it is all about "mobile-friendly" test, there is no need for Googlebot to crawl JavaScript and CSS.
• Mobile friendliness is assimilated at page level rather than sitewide

Bottom Line

One can decide to have a dedicated mobile site or go for a responsive web design! One only needs to ensure that it should give a pleasing user experience on mobile phones. If the visitors are able to easily read the content and see the graphics on the website on their mobile phones, the more traffic would be generated. It would eventually lead to good ranking in Google organic search. It really does not matter which website type you have chosen, dedicated or responsive. Hope this write-up provided you useful insights and would guide you in your decision!