Google Mobilegeddon - Mobile First Indexing - A Marketing Lesson from the Past

Is the upcoming Google Split a marketing visit to the past? Anyone remember New Coke?

Could Google Splitting its Search Index, Prioritizing Mobile over Desktop be the “New Coke” Marketing lesson of the internet search wars?

New Coke versus Old Coke? – Anyone remember this?  I only remember reading about it in a college marketing course.  I don’t think any marketing major escaped college without reading a case study called "New Coke". Coca- Cola was targeting Pepsi Drinkers with a new tasting Coke.  When Pepsi drinkers where asked which they preferred, New Coke or Pepsi, many Pepsi drinkers preferred New Coke.  What Coca-Cola forgot to do was ask what Coke drinkers preferred - New Coke or the current flavored Coke.

What eventually happened was most stores ended up carrying New Coke and the original Coke formula which became “Coke Classic”.

As interesting as the “New Coke” concept may be, the Google Search Engine split is founded on hardcore data which says the number of searches conducted on mobile devices is increasing exponentially. While Google’s decision seems to be an extremely bold move from a business perspective, there will be no going back to ‘Old Coke”.  All trends show us the World Wide Web is going mobile and the requirements, recommendations and compliance requests set forth by Google were created to reward those sites which stay current with better search rankings.