What Is Google's Mobile First Indexing & How It Impacts On Your Website SEO


For the first time in 2016, mobile traffic completely dominated desktop traffic! That's why Google decided to change its search engine indexing algorithm.

We've been hearing a lot about Mobile First Index since Google announced the introduction of Mobile-First Index back on November 4, 2016.


One and a half years later, on March 28, 2018, Google released an official article on the first mobile indexing rollout.


But why should you care about Google Mobile - First Index and how it affects SEO?

Google has already begun migrating websites that follow best practices for mobile first indexing. Google's goal behind this change is to make the web more mobile friendly and to reflect user behavior trends.

Most websites are barely optimized for desktop and mobile. If Google suddenly changes its algorithm to the first mobile indexing, it is possible that many of the sites that are currently competing will face a great deal of SEO pressure.

Will It hurt your website ranking?

Although Mobile's first indexing strategy is still in the early stages of testing, its rollout will be slow and stable. So, you don't have to worry about it as it will not affect your site ranking immediately.

But that doesn't mean you can sit back and do nothing about it and wait for your website to roll out.

What is Google’s Mobile-first Indexing?

The Mobile-First Index means that Google will rank search results based on the mobile version of the webpage instead of the desktop version to provide a better experience for mobile users.

  in short,


Mobile will now understand the basic version of your website when it comes to Google indexing and ranking.

Why did Google decide To Switch Mobile-first Index?

We are already familiar with Google's crawling, indexing and ranking process. Google still uses the desktop version of the web page for listing and ranking.

 After mobile traffic dominated desktop traffic,

Google noted that many people are browsing mobile devices and are therefore looking at mobile versions of the website.

 But their indexing system is still indexing the desktop version of the website, which was clearly down to mobile users when it comes to compatibility and mobile experience.

 Google users were going to experience a lower quality when visiting mobile devices.

  When Google decided to switch to mobile first indexing.

What Does Google Consider In ( Mobile ) ?


If someone asks me this question, "What is a mobile device?" My answer will be very clear as a web developer, "mobiles and tablets".

  Well here's a catch,

  Google does not consider a tablet to be a mobile device. In fact, this pill is in its class.

  According to Google,

  Mobiles = smartphones (devices running Android, iPhone or Windows Phone).
  

Google Is Notifying To It's Users

Sites that have been moved from mobile to indexing before are getting a notification in Google Search Console. Smartphones may increase their crawl rate from Google Boot.

Google's search console report will look something like this.

What Is Google's Mobile First Indexing & How It Impacts On Your Website SEO