What if my site isn't ready for Mobile Armageddon by April 21st??

[TMI.com]

Hello Moz Experts,

I am fighting for one of our sites to be mobile optimized, but the fight is taking longer than anticipated (need approval from higher ups). What happens if my site is not ready by April 21st? Will it take long to recover, like Penguin? Or, will the recovery be fairly quick?

Say I release a mobile version of my site a week later. Then Google will have to reindex it and rank me again. How long will that take before I regain my traffic?

Thanks,

[MattAntonino]

Google has said this change will run real-time, as far as I understand. So while being ready for April 21st is the best option, if you're ready the 23rd it shouldn't take you long to take advantage. Most people will NOT be ready by the 21st, especially those who don't do SEO, used to but stopped or have dodgy providers who aren't keeping up on it.

My advice to you & all of our clients is the same - mobile is the future and ignoring that is business suicide. Get mobile-ready as soon as possible and keep improving your mobile presence. You'll be much better for it in the long run.

As far as "recovery times" - well, I would think along the lines of what Google already is like. If you do a homepage title change it'll reindex in a day or two usually. If you change your contact page maybe a few more days. And if you change text on some old blog post, you may have to ping it directly or it may never get crawled.

[Cocoonfxmedia]

I think Google is right to do this but for many businesses the cost to convert sites and possibly redesigns will mean it will take years for people to catch up. I just hope that Google don't start penalising sites straight away.

[DonnaDuncan]

I, like Cocoonfxmedia, would like to think that given Google has to be aware that not everyone will be able to remedy their situation quickly, they'll go easy at first and ramp up penalties over time.

That said, I don't think anyone outside of Google knows the answer to your question. You're smart to push. I recommend you baseline traffic, conversions and rankings now, before the change, so you can use that push even harder should a negative impact be felt and you need evidence to support your request for approval.