Google Completes Mobile-First Indexing

Google to prioritize and use the mobile version of a website’s content as the primary source for indexing and ranking in search results.

Highlights:

• Google successfully concludes its seven-year-long mobile-first indexing
• This project was initiated over 6.5 years ago, with several deadline extensions along the way.
• Mobile-first indexing involves crawling websites from a mobile browser perspective for indexing and ranking purposes.
• The impact of this update is yet to be seen on websites without a mobile version.

Google Completes Mobile-first Indexing

On October 31, 2023, Google’s John Mueller announced the search engine’s completion of the successful transition to mobile-first indexing. This significant step is a shift in focus towards mobile devices that started with the mobile-friendly update in 2015 and subsequently extended to mobile-first crawling in 2016.

Now that the search engine has all but shifted toward mobile-first indexing, business owners must transition to mobile-friendly websites for better search rankings, user experience, and competitive edge.

The Prevailing Issues with Mobile-first Indexing

While the transition to mobile-first indexing has been a remarkable journey, Google warns that mobile users may experience issues on some sites.

These issues include:

• Pages displaying errors to all mobile users
• Blocking the mobile version of the site through robots.txt while allowing desktop crawling
• Redirecting all mobile pages to the homepage.

In such cases, Google will continue attempting to crawl these sites using the legacy desktop Googlebot crawler. Periodic re-evaluation of this list will be conducted several times a year.

The Legacy Desktop Googlebot On Its Last Legs

There will be a reduction in crawling activities by the legacy desktop Googlebot. This reduction aims to conserve resources for site owners and optimize the efficiency of the crawling process.

The shift towards mobile-first indexing will primarily affect mobile websites in a positive way. You may experience:

• Improved website performance
• Faster loading times

Additionally, Google Search Console will be turning off indexing crawler information on the settings page. The change may affect how website owners monitor and optimize their sites, potentially leading to a better user experience in the long run.

It all comes down to improving your search rankings by making your website as mobile-friendly as possible. See what else matters to the search algorithm in this blog.