The longterm impact of Google mobile-friendly updates in April 2015 and May 2016, to ‘make the web more mobile friendly’, is only now coming to light.

Estate agents that have yet to upgrade their websites to make them mobile responsive have seen a dramatic drop in visitor traffic to their online shop window in the last three months. This is because in a Google search on mobiles any website that isn’t mobile-friendly will not be ranked.

Many estate agents may be completely unaware of this, as the problem is a combination of the impact of an algorithm update and an agent’s website.

As the use of mobile devices has dramatically increased over the last 12 months, some websites have been left behind, as they are not designed for mobile users whilst others report 50 per visitor traffic via mobiles.

Nelly Berova, MD at Art Division – a London digital marketing agency specialising in increasing estate agents’ online visibility – says, “Agents’ websites must be mobile friendly to secure the highest level of enquiries – the website must shrink to perfectly fit the mobile device being used to view it. If it isn’t, Google’s algorithm update for ‘responsive sites’ will not rank those sites.

“One of our clients, who shows property listings on mobile devices but doesn’t yet have a proper mobile responsive site, experienced a 69.7 per cent drop in visitors to its website from mobile devices between May and July, compared to the same period in 2015. This is a dramatic fall.”

On the flip side, those who have invested in an effective mobile responsive website are reaping the benefits; one client recorded an 82.6 per cent increase in mobile device visitors, between May and July 2016, compared with the same period in 2015.