Google ‘Mobile-First Index’ Latest Update to Google Algorithms

Google cautiously work on its algorithms and updates to improve the results appeared on SERP (Search Engine Ranking Pages) and the new update by Google ‘Mobile- First Index’ isn’t actually ‘new’.

Most of us might not have heard about it but it was announced in 2016 by Doantam Phan, Product Manager- Google. Although it was clearly stated that it won’t affect much of the ranking still there will be a massive chaos in the indexing process. Before learning more about Mobile-First Indexing, let’s understand what indexing means.

What is mean by Indexing?

The standard definition of indexing is the process of search engine where the robots come and crawl the website and take snaps, which is stored and considering all the ranking factors, the website is placed on SERP. We can view the saved copy and the last indexed time by visiting the cached version is displayed below.

How Google Indexing Is Done Now:

At present, Google has an indexing procedure in which the desktop site is primarily indexed for providing the results. Even for mobile  What happens in the back ends is the mobile bots land on your website and check the ‘Mobile Friendliness’ of a site on the desktop itself.

What is Mobile-First Indexing?

As mentioned, Google doesn't have a separate indexing process for mobile and the recent figures say that more than 70% of the searches are made from the mobile. So Google is planning to make a separate process of indexing for mobile phones known as Mobile-First Indexing to provide even better results for the mobile users.

Even for the site who have Accelerated Mobile Pages, there’s some gap of providing the exact content because of the existing indexing procedure.

Checklist to face Google’s Mobile-First Index:

1. Make sure that your mobile version of the website has the same content as Desktop version. Even if you have Accelerated Mobile Pages make sure all the content exist on the website.
2. If all of your web pages are not displayed on the mobile version, then sorry, your site will be greatly affected by this update. Try website compressor rather than excluding pages.
3. Proper navigation of menus and sub-menus of the website are the most important factor in the indexing procedure of website under the mobile first-index update.
4. This is actually going to be in the main comprised of mobile pages, meaning that snippets, structured data, and other content will appear in Google search results.
5. The visual appeal even of the mobile-friendly websites are somewhere improper, like the alignment issue of the text, image size or clarity, popups etc. even such minor issues can land your website’s ranking somewhere you don’t want.

This is understandable for all, how this is showing the change in indexing, and even if you have been working on mobile optimization and planning for this kind of change over the past months or years, there are still things your business needs to do to be ready.

 Prepared your business and get started with this new announcement from Google-

• Mobile Sensibility - If your site already has a responsive design, by Google’s standards, you will likely not have to do much to be properly indexed for mobile.
• Structured Data Testing- Trial structured data tests for both URLs and compare the output. Adjust any errors that might be present, but avoid adding any instruction that isn’t necessary to mobile sites.
• Google bots-  Trial the txt testing tool to make sure that the mobile version of your site is accessible to Googlebot this will be key for indexing.
• Canonical Links-  If your site does have canonical links, there is no need to make changes.
• Webmaster Forums- If you have specific questions on your mobile site, you can contact Google Webmasters
• Verify in Search Console- If you have only verified the desktop version of your site, you will need to verify your mobile version as well.
• Building a Mobile Site  - Google will continue to index desktop sites, so it is better to have a quality and complete mobile site.

It is going to take some time for Google to make this change in prioritizing mobile indexing, so in the meantime, do all that you can to optimize your site and get prepared for it.

Going through the optimization list will be comprehensive enough to make sure your site is indexed at this point. Google is very likely to put out more information soon since this is so new. In the next blog, we will explore more in-depth so that you can make a preparation checklist as we enter the New Year.

So Stay Tuned!