Why Matt Cutts Is Wrong About Responsive Web Design

Responsive design and mobile specific sites are back on the SEO radar after a Webmaster video from Matt Cutts. Of course as well with some very strong opinions…

Emphasis mine

“If you want proof that responsive Web design can be detrimental to SEO, do a search on your phone for the query [mobile games] and tell me how many responsive websites you see. I’ll save you the suspense: You’ll only need a finger to count it: 12,000 impressions per month for the term, and 34,000 impressions for [free mobile games], and the sites getting traffic from it are not responsive. Not getting relevant traffic is not SEO.

AND

EA’s wap site is #1 in both smartphone and core search, and Zynga’s mobile games list is the only responsive site to appear in listing #4. Disney’s responsive site appears on the first page for the keyword [games], but they don’t show up for the keyword [mobile games]. This is not an accident. This is the fault of responsive Web design and adaptive content.”

This is is NOT the fault of responsive design and adaptive content, it’s the fault of the wrong optimizations!

As usual, it’s not a Black or White situation and there is a lot of grey area and topic.

The most important thing you should keep in mind: Is my visitor served with the solution and will he be happy after his visit to my site.

OK, now go back to your and take care of the upcoming Holiday shopping season which is coming up… And that 80% of your store visitors wants to have more information about a product on their mobile phone and that only 1% of Multi channel shops have mobile optimized sites (Responsive or non responsive or some other trendy tech buzz word of tomorrow)

(Via Aaron Wall.)