After a relatively lengthy wait, Google has started to roll out its mobile-first index. First announced back in 2016, the mobile-first index is a direct response to the shifting web usage from desktop to predominantly mobile.
Site owners will see significantly increased crawl rate from the Smartphone Googlebot.
Mobile-first indexing means that the mobile version will be considered the primary version when it comes to how Google ranks your site in search results.
According to Google’s own latest guidance on the topic, if you have a responsive site or a dynamic serving site where the primary content and markup is equivalent across mobile and desktop, you shouldn’t have to change anything.
That said, even with a totally responsive site, you’ll want to ensure the mobile version of your website is well optimised by using mobile best practices: Responsive design, page speed, load time, navigation, ease of use. The mobile-first index favours responsive mobile optimised websites in Google search ranking so make sure you add and verify the mobile version of your website in Search Console.
If you only have a desktop site, your content will continue to be indexed; however it may not rank as well in comparison to mobile-friendly websites.
Now that a mobile user agent is being used to crawl and index website content, a non-mobile website will be perceived as having a poorer user experience and the overall rankings on desktop search as well as mobile search results may be negatively impacted.
Creating a mobile-first experience is more important than ever before. With the changes in how Google ranks mobile and desktop pages, you can’t afford to ignore mobile optimization any longer.
If you would like to know more about mobile-first indexing or want to ensure your website is ranking in Google, contact us for a chat.