Google to Experiment with Mobile First Indexing for Search Ranking

access_time January 18, 2020
by   TechmavenitAdmin
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With a majority of the Google users searching on mobile devices as opposed to desktop computers, Google has decided to shift the focus of indexing from desktop to mobile. As a first step, Google has begun experimenting with mobile- first indexing, which will primarily look at the mobile version of your website for its ranking signals. Their index is to be primarily comprised by mobile pages, meaning that snippets, structured data, and other content will appear on Google search results. If however, there is no mobile version, it will fall back on your desktop version Problem with desktop indexing vis- a- vis mobile users Until now, Google was indexing desktop content for delivering all search results whether the search came from desktop or mobile. However, users found viewing the desktop site content on their mobile devices problematic as the content was made for the desktop viewer only. For Google, users’ interests are paramount in their scheme of things. Although Google’s search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, it’s algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in its results. Of course, while its index will be built from mobile documents, Google is going to continue to build a great search experience for all users, whether they come from mobile or desktop devices. What led Google to prefer mobile – first indexing Google realized from the very outset that most of the queries in its search box came from mobile devices and  something more favoring mobile searchers had to be delivered. Google acknowledges that the goal is really to improve the experience for users, whether they are on desktop or mobile. Preparing yourself for mobile indexing With this new policy shift in indexing from Google, businesses need to do the relevant mobile optimization if you have not done that. This is a challenge that you need to take up so that your mobile site appears in mobile search results. Google has given us certain suggestions that should help webmasters meet this challenge. Mobile friendly test You need to do a mobile friendly test to make sure your website is optimized for mobile use and you can check out Google’s primary mobile guide for more information on optimization. Responsive design If your site already has a responsive design or a dynamic serving site where the primary content and markup is same across mobile and desktop, then your site is likely to be indexed for mobile. Site configuration If you have a site configuration where the primary content and markup is different across mobile and desktop, you should make some changes to your site and serve structured markup for both the desktop and mobile version. In addition, when adding structured data to a mobile site, always avoid adding large amounts of markup that is not relevant to the specific information content of each document. Use the robots.txt-testing tool to verify that your mobile version is accessible to Googlebot. Though Google has not set a specific date for its mobile – first indexing roll out, Google will go ahead if it proves useful to users during the experimental stage. While your desktop version is what affects your search ranking currently, this is going to change and the sooner you can make improvements to your mobile site, the better.  

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