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Is responsive design compulsary for the websites in this mobile era?

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by Neeraj Chaurasia, Mar 31, 2015.

  1. #1
    Yesterday, I was seeing many top brands websites, but they are not responsive websites. They have a large number of pages and I hope they have a large database too. If I talk about http://www.ibm.com/in/en/ , it is a very large website but it doesn't have responsive design but there are many visitors who use this website into mobile, smartphones or iPhones and iPads. So I feel that It is not necessary to make a website as responsive. We can also go with adaptive website. What do you say? Please share your thoughts.
     
    Neeraj Chaurasia, Mar 31, 2015 IP
  2. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #2
    The IBM site might not be responsive, but it has its own mobile domain. And yes, a responsive layout, or at least a version of the page for smaller screens are mandatory - also because of Google's new focus on mobile-friendly websites to affect rankings.
     
    PoPSiCLe, Mar 31, 2015 IP
  3. Neeraj Chaurasia

    Neeraj Chaurasia Banned

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    #3
    I agree with you but I have researched many sites which are not responsive and don't have the mobile version. If you check the amazon.com or flipkart.com on your mobile then they have a link to download their App. Earlier, mostly large websites have the mobile versions but now responsive is very new concept and these large websites are trying to make their website as responsive. So, which of these approaches is best suited for your business? Responsive or Adaptive web design? The answer is not straightforward. The aim of both is to create a mobile responsive design; however, Adaptive web design is quite complicated and fairly expensive. It’s an option that only large companies with little or no budgetary constraints can enjoy. Also, experts believe that the practice of creating multiple versions of the same site is on its way out.
     
    Neeraj Chaurasia, Mar 31, 2015 IP
  4. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #4
    There are several factors that explain why you'll see a lot of larger sites STILL lack responsive design.

    1) large companies are slow to change and loathe to change -- they've paid a fortune for something a fifteen year old could do a better job of in a weekend, it's worked for them for years, (or even decades), they don't see a reason to tack with the change in the wind. This is a weakness that often costs them the business; a stunning non-web example being how most people under 30 probably have no clue who DEC, WYSE or Wang are. A stunning web example would be the death of so many pre dotcom bubble burst companies that tried to stay the course no matter how bad the storm got. One of the people I did business with a decade ago called it the "Bohemian Rhapsody business model." -- Any way the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me.

    ... and you look at the big picture you'll see company after company fall flat on their faces when a younger, more agile more forward-looking competitor comes along. It's the REAL meaning of "web 2.0" and the REAL reason the term was coined -- younger websites that "got it" and supplanted already established ones.

    The motivations for such resistance to change is typically rooted in fear of losing what they already have (even while they are losing it) or just the classic ignorance, apathy and wishful thinking... Apathy in particular can find it's roots in the "500 pound gorilla attitude"

    That's where a company has so much dominance they pretty much stop trying, innovating and just coast on their reputation. IE6's history is a stunning example of this where Microsoft had market dominance, NOTHING even came CLOSE to competing (Sorry Opera 5/6/7 and Mozilla Suite) so they went so far as shuttting down their entire browser development team and resting on their laurels. In terms of websites Amazon and E-Bay would be good examples as audiences are so hooked on the content and the content actually is THAT DAMNED GOOD, users are willing to put up with it being a slow loading mess with little if any graceful degradation.

    Facebook is another example -- it's an accessibility train wreck of JS for nothing, fixed fonts, fixed layout masquerading poorly as being responsive -- but they've made it so easy to share goofy funny crap with non-techy family and friends they could wipe their ass, put it on a serving plate and call it a website, and most people would just say "pass the tabasco." -- at least until a serious competitor who gets it comes along with the capitol and drive to unseat them properly. (Sorry Google+, nice try but epic fail)

    Hell, these forums are a decent example of this; I'm sitting here overriding their stye with user.css, selectively blocking domains, rewriting large sections of the markup with user.js JUST to make it usable for me. IF the content wasn't that damned good do you REALLY think I'd be jumping through those hoops?

    BUT, for the vast majority of websites the content is NOT that damned good, so you need to do it BETTER than the competition. Unless you are REALLY in a niche market with unique content of value, someone out there is probably doing the same thing, nobody has heard of you, so you need to be dotting every t and crossing every i. Wait... that's not right...

    2) Their web presence is an afterthought. Large brick and mortar companies are often guilty of this, they view their website as a billboard, not a content delivery tool because to be frank, it's just an advertisement. McDonalds and the overpriced art-faygelah train wreck of how NOT to build a website is the poster child for this sort of thing. It's pretty, it's flashy... and it's useless if you are trying to glean actual information from it. What do they care? For them it's a money-pit expense that they only have because "well you HAVE to have a website". Does it meaningfully impact their bottom line? Doubtful. STill, you visit their website and all that comes to mind is the little old lady from the Wendy's commercial... It's a big bun. Big fluffy bun. It's a really big bun...

    WHERE'S THE BEEF?

    3) Their existing sites weren't built properly in the first place so making changes like adding responsiveness is pretty much tossing the whole mess and starting over from scratch. Simple fact is SO many people continued the past 17 years sleazing out HTML 3.2 and the proprietary garbage that followed and slapped 4 tranny on it saying "oh well" in creating new sites, that they are inaccessible fixed width fixed font train wrecks. Sadly HTML 5 only further encourages said outdated outmoded coding practices, and the industry as a whole continues to do things and have an attitude that prevents established "designers" from embracing many of the concepts.

    Those of us who've spent the past 10 to 15 years doing things like semantic markup (a sick euphemism for using HTML properly instead of just sleazing it out any-old-way in ignorance), separation of presentation from content, content FIRST development, progressive enhancement -- as well as accessible design practices like elastic semi-fluid layout -- find responsive design to simply be the next logical step. This means that for many of us our five to ten year old sites can be made responsive in an afternoon since we already HAVE media targets, we already have sensible content order and logical document structure --- it simply becomes a matter of adding a viewport meta and media queries to the existing stylesheet to re-arrange the layouts. It's a no brainer if you've bothered paying ANY attention to what we've been told to do for good practices for over a decade and a half! We have forum members here older than the concepts that lead to accessible device-neutral websites.

    But, if you've been sleazing out HTML any old way, saying in the markup what EVERYTHING looks like, misusing/abusing numbered headings (if using them at all), using line-breaks and non-breaking spaces to do padding's job, tables for layout, declaring font sizes in pixels, fixed width layouts; all of the concepts of responsive design might as well be an alien language... and that means when it comes time to try and make such a site mobile friendly (or even modern desktop friendly... or accessible... or bandwidth efficient by leveraging cache) the people making sites that way

    Mated to that are the people who just crapped out pages in WYSIWYGS like the preview panel in Dreamweaver or Frontpage. That particular bit of asshattery does NOTHING but vomit up presentational markup, and much like the mouth-breathing dumbass halfwit practice of spanking it on the screen in photoshop and having the giant pair of donkey brass to call it "web design" is putting the cart before the horse and the road to failure if you care in the SLIGHTEST about accessibility and device neutrality.

    Bottom line, NEW websites SHOULD in an ideal world be coded to be accessible to all in as user friendly a manner as possible using as little bandwidth as needed. That means content first development with separation of presentation from content, using progressive enhancement to provide graceful degradation, with media targets and layouts built with dynamic fonts (em measurements so they auto-scale to browser/os/user preference), semi-fluid layout (max width in EM so long lines aren't hard to follow while still shrinking to fit smaller displays -- AND that width adjusting to the font size), and responsive. Again, responsive layout to be accessible on as many screen media devices as possible is simply the next logical step in accessible design.

    You should be doing this so that someone can't simply come along, rip off your idea and content and do a better job of it; since in MOST cases if you inconvenience a user enough times in enough ways, for the majority of what the majority of websites provide, users can usually just go get it somewhere else as there's typically another "flavor of the week" waiting in the wings to take your spot. Finding that magical perfect content or method of delivery that lets you reach 500 pound gorilla status? Unlikely in all but the rarest of cases so you damned well better do it right, or you're just dooming yourself to "also ran" status.

    OF course, that's a SHOULD since with so many people refusing to pull their heads out of 1997's backside and putting appearance ahead of functionality, most "designers" out there end up little more than "this here's a story 'bout Billy Joe and Bobby Sue" scam artists sleazing together off the shelf parts and blindly hoping that it either works out well, or that the client is too ignorant to know the difference.

    ... all of which is why more often than not when people ask me about their websites, I have to be brutally frank and say "toss it and start over, there's nothing there I'd even bother trying to salvage." You know it's sad but true...
     
    deathshadow, Mar 31, 2015 IP
  5. COBOLdinosaur

    COBOLdinosaur Active Member

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    #5
    My personal site is not responsive and I have no plans to make that way in the near future. Less than 3% of visitors are using screens under 800px width and that is the min-width I have set. I did an experiment on one of my templates and it took about 3 hours; mostly css changes for media queries and layout adjustments. so if the demand for mobile gets to around 5% I can probably convert the site in a couple of days. However the target audience is developers looking for a solution to a problem. They are generally not doing that in the back of a taxi on their phone. More than half of my traffic is using widths indicative of desktop monitors and the rest are in the range of laptops.

    I think any site that gets enough traffic to justify the cost of conversion should do it; just as they should support browsers that show enough traffic to warrant the cost of supporting them. It is simple bottom line economics you do what you need to do to reach the audience that you need to have, and you don't worry about directions or trends that that do not help or hinder your bottom line.

    As for ranking penalties; that is sort of right. Google told me that if i don't become "mobile friendly" the penalty will be they do not bring me up in searches by mobile users, so I will lose traffic from mobile. For me that would be perfect as it would eliminate most od the tiny group who come to me on mobile and contribute nothing but bounces and low engagement. I am almost to the point where I can drop support for IE9, so maybe when I drop them I will add mobile.
     
    COBOLdinosaur, Mar 31, 2015 IP
  6. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #6
    Well, in your case the outdated markup and utter complete lack of semantics or logical document structure are the bigger worry -- you've painted yourself into the corner on having so many pages without the base being accessible or even using HTML properly... It puts you squarely in that third category where you have to start weighing the time and cost of conversion against if the site is meeting it's purpose. Sadly said lack of semantics means that I'd be surprised if Google even bothers listing you in a search.

    Part of why I say that much like STRICT markup, responsive and mobile friendly is supposed to be what all NEW sites are built with; older existing sites it's going to be a struggle, particularly if you didn't use semantic markup and progressive enhancement in the first place.

    I mean:
    <div id="overlay" class="md-hide"></div>
    <div id="loglink"><a href="login.html" title="login to COBOLdinosaur.com"> Login</a>
    <strong> OR </strong><a href="register.html"  title="Join COBOLdinosaur.com">FREE registration</a>
    </div> <div id="ffbox">
    <a href="Why_Optimize_for_Firefox.html" title="Quality comes from standards compliance">Why this site looks better in <strong>Firefox</strong></a>
    <div id="ffthumb"><img src="../images/thumbs/opt-FF.png" alt="Thumbnail" /></div>
    </div>
    
    <div id="borrowBox">
            <img src="../images/borrow.png" alt="Borrow my code"
            onclick="document.getElementById('overlay').className='md-show md-overlay';
            document.getElementById('borrowMsg').className='md-type-grow md-modal md-content md-show';">
    </div>
    Code (markup):
    DIV for nothing, DIV for nothing, more DIV for nothing, scripting only elements in the markup... Why are you putting "more emphasis" on just the word "or", where's your h1, and what's with the pointless scripttardery inlined in the markup? Much less large sections of your page reading as run-on sentences from a lack of block level containers. This for example:
    <section id="PLeftcol">
    <nav id="scrnav"><br />
    Click an item for listing<br />
    <a  href="scripts-css.html" title=" ">CSS<span>A Few Pieces of CSS to Save a Broken Template or Help You Build Your Own</span></a>
    <a  href="scripts-js.html" title=" ">Javascript<span>Some Serious Scripting Ideas to Make Web Development a Little Easier</span></a>
    <a  href="scripts-hta.html" title=" ">htaccess<span>A Few Bits and Pieces to Help with Web Development</span></a>
    <a  href="scripts-php.html" title=" ">PHP<span>Some Code for the Server Side of Web Sites</span></a>
    <a  href="scripts-dom.html" title=" ">DOM<span>A Few Bits and Pieces to Help You Understand and Use the Document Object</span></a>
    <a  href="scripts-html.html" title=" ">HTML<span>A Few HTML and HTML5 Codes</span></a>
    </nav>
    </section>
    Code (markup):
    Pointless SECTION, pointless NAV (though I say that about NAV in general) IF you were using numbered headings properly, pointless title attributes, lack of whitespace meaning the part outside the span is one word with the text after it (that's what inline-level tags do!) and the lack of block level tags means that basically a search engine or screen reader would see that text as:

    "CSSA Few Pieces of CSS to Save a Broken Template or Help You Build Your Own JavascriptSome Serious Scripting Ideas to Make Web Development a Little Easier htaccessA Few Bits and Pieces to Help with Web Development PHPSome Code for the Server Side of Web Sites DOMA Few Bits and Pieces to Help You Understand and Use the Document Object HTMLA Few HTML and HTML5 Codes"

    As evidenced by viewing it in LYNX or listening to it with JAWS. (that's actually a cut and paste FROM LYNX). I for one was unaware that JavascriptSome and PHPSome were all one word, much less what's HTMLA? :p Remember, inline level tags do NOT provide document structure, and that's part of why HTML 5's bullshit attempt at changing the structural rules is resulting in accessible broken train wrecks...

    Pathetic when they are selling it to developers as improving things on that front when it's had the complete opposite effect!

    It's a great example of having painted yourself into a corner; to properly go accessible and device neutral you'd have to pitch it all and start over from scratch... and that really sucks to have to do and you have to question if it's worth the effort to you.

    Though honestly, it's SO bad I'd be tossing it and starting over anyways.
     
    deathshadow, Mar 31, 2015 IP
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  7. COBOLdinosaur

    COBOLdinosaur Active Member

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    #7
    Actually Google provides 50% of traffic most months, and the mobile crackdown, just eliminates the nuisance traffic. The percentage holds because direct (from bookmarking) is also growing terms of absolute numbers. My total traffic is up 40 % over the last year and a lot of that is because Google keeps popping up my pages on page one of the SERPs enough to keep growing. So long as they put me ahead of StackO, or just behind them on page one for some search terms it is fine with me if they don't put me up there for mobile users.

    I am making note of the criticism. Some deserved, but we have fundamental differences about where HTML5 sits and neither of us is going to convince the other to change sides. Most of the change to mobile is simply scripting to change the way I generate plus the CSS changes, but it will have to wait until after I deploy some other things. If the Google traffic starts to drop I will run some experiments to see if it is the mobile thing, or if I am getting beat up by competition that has improved. If mobile issues are a real factor then I will make the changes necessary to work at 320px and everything from there up to infinity. It is not a big deal. I did have to change that span though HTMLA and PHPA sounds too Canadian. A bit sloppy, but the fix was a 10 second change and then 20 minutes of documentation of putting the patch into production.

    The site meets its objectives. first it is intended as a place to experiment with SEO, user behavior, and performance. Second it is there to demonstrate alternatives to Jquery. So sometimes there are questionable practices used, but within the standards (HTML5/CSS) though sometimes I have to use the hyphen hacks which are technically to standard as "experimental implementations"; but I would rather they did not exist. finally it is a repository of content that requires people to actually code if they want to integrate it. So if I seter someone from falling into the jquery trap and learning to write their own code, that is good. If my experiments fail, I learn more than if they succeed, and when a client or someone on a site like this speculates and is wrong, I don't have to guess because I have done the experimentation to know the facts.

    I would have preferred that HTML4 continue on an evolutionary path, but W3C made the idiotic decision to go to XHTML and then compounded the mistake by giving WHATWG a foothold. So we ended up with HTML5 moving too far; too soon. However my opinion is that HTML5 is better for developers, users and manufacturers; but it would be nice if WHATWG got shipped off to Mars so the more conservative people at W3C have a chance to tighten it up.

    It does not matter if we disagree. My presentation is noisy, and frequently not best practice. However the people who need to be educated think that is what they want to do and there is no chance to teach them anything if there is no bait to make them take a look. All the essays and rants in the world are not going to reach a college kid who thinks web sites need 2mb of images and 40 files to do "cool" stuff. I have done enough teaching to know that to raise someone up you have to go down to their level; grab them by the throat; show them a better way to be "cool"; and bring them up to a civilized level.
     
    COBOLdinosaur, Apr 3, 2015 IP
  8. Neeraj Chaurasia

    Neeraj Chaurasia Banned

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    #8
    Hi Coboldinosaur,
    I would like to suggest you that if you are getting 3% of traffic from mobile than you should prefer for the responsive web design. You should apply HTML5 for your website. As you know that most of the people use Google on the mobile devices and if they find your website in SERPs and open then they will not look your website properly. If your 3% visitors are not seeing your website properly then you should think about them. You know that every single user is important and he/she must be satisfied from your website. They can find your website from your Facebook, twitter or any other social network. You should also check the bounce rate of your website. I damn sure that it will be high for your website.

    I agree with your all points but its my personal thinking that our website must be mobile friendly. Currently Google also launched that website must be also "Moon Friendly". SO such kind of new things are being very popular as per user and device requirement.

    Google says, "When optimizing your site for small devices such as mobile phones and tablets, it's easy to get caught up in the details. Don't forget to think big. Think moonshots. Develop a plan to optimize your site for the Moon."

    moon-friendly.png

    I am not getting Google that what does it mean "Moon-friendly websites" ?
    So there are coming many new concepts in the current era which are also related to HTML5 and more. I hope @deathshadow knows about it.
     
    Neeraj Chaurasia, Apr 5, 2015 IP
  9. Neeraj Chaurasia

    Neeraj Chaurasia Banned

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    #9
    viewport-responsive.png
    In the USA, "94% of people with #smartphones search for local information" on their phones. Interestingly, "77% of mobile searches occur at home or at work", places where desktop computers are likely to be present.

    Mobile is critical to your business and will continue to be so – whether you’re blogging about your favorite sports team, working on the website for your community theater, or selling products to potential clients. Make sure visitors can have a good experience on your site when they’re visiting from their mobile devices!

    Thats why, Responsive design is must for every website. What do you say?
     
    Neeraj Chaurasia, Apr 5, 2015 IP
  10. ericbacon45

    ericbacon45 Peon

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    #10
    It is very compulsory nowadays . I think Google new algorithm that will release on April 21 is very much based mobile friendly . So it is good that you have responsive websites. That support mobiles .
     
    ericbacon45, Apr 6, 2015 IP
  11. Mr victor

    Mr victor Well-Known Member

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    #11
    As an internet marketer using wordpress, there are many themes out there that comes with responsiveness feature. But the main thing is traffic anf how to get it. Responsiveness doesnt really matter (marketers wants to make money) when you can easily convert your website to a mobile app.
     
    Mr victor, Apr 6, 2015 IP
  12. sam.hunt0710

    sam.hunt0710 Member

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    #12
    Customizing a Responsive website nowadays helps you in getting good traffic , visitors from those who usually use smartphones for accessing websites and if you are not having responsive website they will go to another link in the similar niche.
     
    sam.hunt0710, Apr 6, 2015 IP
  13. COBOLdinosaur

    COBOLdinosaur Active Member

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    #13
    No they are not, All of the 30%+ traffic coming from direct (bookmarks) are on 1300+ width devices. so are most of the referrals from links on professional sites. The only mobile I get are the accidental idiots who are looking for something else and use a term that happens to bring up one of my pages because of some matching text. I don't want them or need them because they are a waste of bandwidth.

    Average for content pages 34%.
    Directs:28%; referral:31%; SEs:40%
    US: 37%; India: 29%; UK:40%

    You are applying commercial metrics to a sight that is not for or about consumer products, selling anything, or advertising. I don't care if anyone visits the site except that they provide data for SEO and user behavior experiments. Not getting mobile visitors would eliminate user data that I have to filter out anyway. 99.9% of my target audience are developers looking for a solution, and they are not working on the code on a 320px screen.

    I have most of my clients on mobile because they need it to service a customer base that uses mobile on their sites. Making my site mobile friendly is not a lot of work. Some media queries, and minor changes to the page generators for minor layout changes. that is not the issue. The real issue is Google heavy-hand arrogant dictates commanding the Internet universe that all sites must be mobile friendly or get spanked by mama Google. Screw them!

    If at some point, If find it is hurting my access to the data, then I will do the mobile crap and detect devices serverside so I can dump the sessions in the trash and perhaps I will even send along a message to mobile user to go somewhere else because we don't have any shoes for sale; stoclmarket deals; or naked high school girls.
     
    COBOLdinosaur, Apr 6, 2015 IP
  14. kk5st

    kk5st Prominent Member

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    #14
    That explains why your site has been such a disappointment. ;-)

    g
     
    kk5st, Apr 6, 2015 IP
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  15. COBOLdinosaur

    COBOLdinosaur Active Member

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    #15
    :D Maybe I should add some; then everyone would want a BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG screen.
     
    COBOLdinosaur, Apr 8, 2015 IP
  16. RezzRaygun

    RezzRaygun Member

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    #16
    When I built my first website almost 15 years ago, everyone used tables and frames. When that way died a death because of new better ways of doing it, people still clung to tables and frames because that's what they knew. Same with flash sites. Web design and development always has been and always will be a learning curve and evolvement with technologies and practices. Moving with these evolvements is the distinction between a professional web designer and someone that can build a website. Personally I believe that yes, a fluid responsive website is absolutely essential when building a new website because the comparison is that a static layout is the equivalent of still using tables and frames when browsers were fully supporting CSS. Responsive design has been around for a few years now, it is not new and has standards. It is also very easy to implement as long as it is considered in the initial structure of the site.
     
    RezzRaygun, Apr 9, 2015 IP
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  17. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #17
    Which is -- like most other things -- where most people fall flat on their faces since they start out pissing around in PSD's or dicking around with appearance before they even have semantic markup.
     
    deathshadow, Apr 9, 2015 IP
  18. RezzRaygun

    RezzRaygun Member

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    #18
    Absolutely agreed, and again a very old way of doing things since CSS3, as there is no need for images as part of the main design anymore either.
     
    RezzRaygun, Apr 10, 2015 IP
  19. COBOLdinosaur

    COBOLdinosaur Active Member

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    #19
    You are preaching to the choir, many of my clients have been converted to mobile, because they need to support mobile. The issue is not whether mobile should be implemented, but whether it should be implemented where there is no value added. The bigger issue is doe Google have any business dictating design formats. do we next get Google deciding that any site that does not have a Google search bar or Google +1 icon is not "Google friendly" and will be penalized. How about if Google decides that any site not carrying Google ads is a bad neighborhood and drops their page rank, or anyone using Facebook or Yahoo for ads gets de-indexed.

    It is a slippery slope when they start dictating design specs, and what technologies web sites have to support. They are already being investigated for anti-trust issues in the EU: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/02/us-google-eu-idUSKBN0MT00R20150402

    I think maybe it is coming to the time when they need to be broken up, because they have become an evil empire intent deciding what site are worthy of life and those which must be terminated. Really arrogant for a company that claims to index the whole internet when the fact is they only index about 16% of the visible internet and none of the darknet. I wonder how it is that the other 84% get along without Google traffic and why the number of sites carrying Google ads is also around 16%.
     
    COBOLdinosaur, Apr 10, 2015 IP
  20. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #20
    I wonder which parts of the Internet they include - if you look to Asia (especially China), Google is almost non-existent - hence, there's a pretty large web-population out there that never uses Google, at all.
     
    PoPSiCLe, Apr 10, 2015 IP
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