Google is beginning to roll out the brand new “mobile-first” index, but what exactly does this update mean for you? With the mobile-first index, Google will now prioritize its results based primarily on the mobile version of a website.
Prepare yourself for this change, and don’t let your website lose rankings because of it! Read our commonly asked questions about the mobile-first index below!
- What is different now with the mobile-first index?
Google is attempting to appeal to the primary platform on which people search, which is now mobile devices. Google will start to index the mobile version of all websites in their algorithm to determine search ranking positions, even when searching on a desktop or any other platform. This change in how Google crawl websites could result is some very positive or negative changes on your websites ranking!
- My desktop site has more content than my mobile site. Is this an issue?
In short: it might be. If the content on your desktop site is helping you rank and the same content does not exist on your mobile site, it could negatively impact your rankings significantly. Because of this, we recommend using responsive websites over a whole new website specifically for mobile users. Responsive websites will have all of the content across all devices, but it will be formatted differently to make use of the space on screen.
- How is expandable content being crawled by Google?
On desktop versions of websites, Google has given low priority to content in tabs, expandable boxes, and accordions. However, in this update, information in these categories will be given full priority, if done correctly. Expandable content is more practical on mobile search, which is why Google has changed the way it crawls the content on mobile sites.
- When will I see the changes from this mobile-first index?
While testing has been ongoing for a few users, we are still many months away from this update being fully rolled out. You will likely not see any changes until it has fully been rolled out. This update will be global, so it will be an even playing field worldwide.