Today Google announced it will be going from experimental testing to implementation with their Mobile-first Indexing. Their statistics are demonstrating most people searching on Google are using a mobile device. How will this work moving forward?

Their search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, their 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 their results. Their focus is to deliver a great search experience for all users, no matter what kind of device their are using.

How does this effect you and your site?

• If you have a responsive site or a dynamic serving site where your primary content is equal across mobile and desktop you shouldn’t have to change a thing.
• If your site configuration  where your primary content is different across devices then you should consider a responsive or separate mobile web site.
• If you have only verified desktop web site, add your mobile version immediately.
• If you only have a desktop site, Google will continue to index your site fine even with using the new Mobile-first indexing.

Some tips to improve your site/rankings:

• Make sure you are serving structured markup for both desktop and mobile
  Use the  Structured Data Testing Tool to compare your output and to make modifications.
  When adding structured data to your mobile site, Google suggests avoiding large amounts of markup that is not relevant to the specific information of the each document.
• Use the Robots.txt Testing Tool to verify if Googlebot can access your site.
• Sites don’t have to make changes to their canonical links since Google will continue to use these links as guides to serve the appropriate results.

Google suggests that if you are building a mobile version of your web site, wait until its ready! A functional desktop-oriented site is better than a partial mobile friendly version. Even from a marking standpoint its always best to put your best foot forward since you have such a small window to capture your audience.

If you have any questions, please Contact VisionSnap today.