Monday Google made it official, they are "Mobile-First indexing".
What is Mobile-First indexing?
"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."
If your website is mobile-friendly, Google is going to use the mobile-friendly version of your website (NOT the Desktop version) as the version they index and determine rankings by!
Now if you have a Responsive website - then this announcement is irrelevant because your Desktop and Mobile version(s) are all the same, so they are technically already indexing your mobile version. But if you have a separate "mobile-version" then that - essentially, dumbed-down version of your website - is what Google is going to start indexing and using to determine rankings!
Frankly, this move makes sense. Having a separate "mobile-version" is an outdated practice. The blunt truth is: Google wants to serve their users the most relevant and helpful content. They want users to actually use the websites they give favorable rankings to.
Google has previously stated their preference is a responsive design. An updated and modern-functioning website IS more likely to have content accurate and useful to the User's search request. This is the same reason they now monitor and reward a website with fast loading time - Users are more likely to use and stay on the website that the Google search recommended.
They go on to give this recap:
- "Mobile-indexing is rolling out more broadly. Being indexed this way has no ranking advantage and operates independently from our mobile-friendly assessment." (They are saying here that this is merely HOW they are collecting information, but we know that the information they collect does in fact impact ranking)
- "Having mobile-friendly content is still helpful for those looking at ways to perform better in mobile search results.(As a point to prove my above note." (Having a mobile-friendly site can help you perform better in the search results. And this is not specific to just Google. Bing and the other search engines have very similar standards)
- "Having fast-loading content is still helpful for those looking at ways to perform better for mobile and desktop users." (WebsiteForge customers websites are almost always served much faster than their competition. See this article)
- "As always, ranking uses many factors. We may show content to users that's not mobile-friendly or that is slow loading if our many other signals determine it is the most relevant content to show." (Ultimately the goal Google has is to offer users searching on their site the most relevant results for their search. The best way they can do that is if you as the website owner put relevant data, and a lot of it, on your website. This way Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others know exactly what you do, how you do it, and why you should be used. )
Make sure you're giving Search Engines and your Visitors what they want!
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