Google launches mobile-first search result indexing

If you’re reading this article on a smartphone or tablet, you’re part of the majority.

In February 2017, mobile devices accounted for nearly half (49.7 percent) of all webpage views, and mobile users are also regularly interacting with content: The Interactive Advertising Bureau reported that 63 percent of smartphone users around the world turn to their phones at least every 30 minutes.

The trend of mobile content consumption has been growing—and search engines such as Google are taking note.

On Monday, Google announced the change on its Webmaster Central Blog:

Today we’re announcing that after a year and a half of careful experimentation and testing, we’ve started migrating sites that follow the best practices for mobile-first indexing.

To recap, our crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have typically used the desktop version of a page's content, which may cause issues for mobile searchers when that version is vastly different from the mobile version. Mobile-first indexing means that we'll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they're looking for.

We continue to have one single index that we use for serving search results. We do not have a “mobile-first index” that’s separate from our main index. Historically, the desktop version was indexed, but increasingly, we will be using the mobile versions of content.

TechCrunch reported:

Back in 2016, Google first detailed its plan to change the way its search index operates, explaining how its algorithms would eventually be shifted to use the mobile version of a website’s content to index its pages, as well as to understand its structured data and to show snippets from the site in the Google search results.

… However, Google has begun to prioritize mobile sites in several ways. For example, it began to boost the rank of mobile-friendly webpages on mobile search results back in 2015, and more recently said it was adding a signal that uses page speed to help determine a page’s mobile search ranking. Starting in July 2018, slow-loading content will be downranked.

Search Engine Land reported:

This is the first time Google has confirmed it is moving a large number of sites to this mobile-first indexing process. Google did tell us last October that a limited number of sites had been moved over. But this Google announcement makes it sound like the process of mobile-first indexing on a larger scale has already begun.

It’s important to note that Google isn’t moving every website to its mobile-first indexing strategy, but rather will move websites that already boast best practices in mobile landing pages. All websites that will be included in this first wave of the shift will be notified through Google’s Search Console and should start to see more traffic from Google’s Smartphone Googlebot.

PR and marketing pros also shouldn’t worry if their organizations’ websites aren’t following mobile-first browsing best practices (at least, not yet).

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Google wrote:

… Sites that are not in this initial wave don’t need to panic. Mobile-first indexing is about how we gather content, not about how content is ranked. Content gathered by mobile-first indexing has no ranking advantage over mobile content that’s not yet gathered this way or desktop content. Moreover, if you only have desktop content, you will continue to be represented in our index.

Having said that, we continue to encourage webmasters to make their content mobile-friendly. We do evaluate all content in our index -- whether it is desktop or mobile -- to determine how mobile-friendly it is. Since 2015, this measure can help mobile-friendly content perform better for those who are searching on mobile. Related, we recently announced that beginning in July 2018, content that is slow-loading may perform less well for both desktop and mobile searchers.

Engadget reported:

[Google] is adamant that desktop-only sites won't vanish from the index, and that phone-optimized sites included in the first wave won't have an advantage over either desktop content or mobile pages that have yet to be included. And if it happens that a desktop site is more relevant to a given search, you'll still see it ranked higher than its mobile alternatives.

However, Google’s change will eventually affect all websites competing for the coveted top spots in its search results on mobile devices.

VentureBeat reported:

The bigger picture here is that Google wants to “encourage webmasters to make their content mobile-friendly.” Even if the mobile-first indexing does not affect ranking right now, Google still evaluates all content in its index to determine how mobile-friendly it is.

PR and marketing pros looking to rank high for consumers browsing on phones and tablets should prepare now to make their digital content as mobile-friendly as possible, which includes ensuring that your website’s pages load quickly.

Google’s announcements also highlight the importance of incorporating consumers’ increasing use of mobile devices into their marketing and PR efforts.

Impact wrote in a blog post:

Inbound marketers have been following the rise of mobile marketing for years, but considering how ingrained mobile devices are in our lives as both consumers and professionals today, it shouldn't really be considered a "trend." It should be a staple.

Optimizing for mobile (if not creating a dedicated mobile marketing strategy) is something you should've done by now, but if you haven't, it needs to be done in 2018. No excuses.

You can learn more about best practices for mobile-indexing on Google’s developer index.

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