An important change is happening at Google. With an increasing number of searches occurring on mobile devices (most recent estimates come in at nearly 60 percent), Google has decided to roll out “mobile-first Indexing.” This means Google will build and rank its search listings based on the mobile versions of websites, as opposed to desktop-site indexing, which is currently being used.
What does this mean to your business?
If you only have a responsive site that works well for both desktop and mobile users, Google will continue to index your site without any issue. However, if you have a separate mobile website, which is an abbreviated version of your desktop site, you should consider making changes so mobile users have full access to the content and functionality you currently provide only to desktop users. You will want to ensure the content and links on your mobile site are close enough to the desktop site to allow Google to index the content and rank the site.
A launch date for mobile-first Indexing hasn’t been set, but since Google wants its search results to represent the mobile searchers that make up more than half of its users, it’s coming soon. To learn more, visit Google’s Webmaster Central Blog or contact Heather Gibbs at h.gibbs@match2paper.com.