Google begins mobile-first indexing

Google has begun testing it’s mobile-first indexing, which will use the mobile version of your site for ranking signals instead of the desktop version.

What does mobile-first indexing mean?

At the moment Google’s index is based on crawling desktop results.

As more and more people are accessing the internet via mobile, Google has started to put more emphasis on a positive mobile experience.

A quote from Google:

To make our results more useful, we’ve begun experiments to make our index mobile-first. Although our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results. Of course, while our index will be built from mobile documents, we’re going to continue to build a great search experience for all users, whether they come from mobile or desktop devices.

With these new changes, Google will primarily index mobile and then decide where you rank for both desktop and mobile. In effect, if your site isn’t mobile friendly then this will have a negative impact your desktop performance.

Google is testing the mobile-first index, if successful expect it to be rolled out across the board.

Google said it has started this experiment and will “continue to carefully experiment over the coming months on a small scale.” Google will “ramp up this change when we’re confident that we have a great user experience.”

Do you need help with a responsive site?

Cite have in-depth knowledge of mobile responsive sites across a range of brands and industries. If you would like to future proof your business then please get in touch for an informal discussion by calling 0116 254 9888 or complete our online contact form.