Smartphones and tablets have taken over desktop computers for online searches, yet Google is only indexing content from the desktop version of a website. To counter this Google could soon be moving to a mobile-first indexing system. So, what does that mean and how does this affect our SEO?
2 different sets of content, one search result…
Mobile websites may not show the same content as a desktop version of the website, the scenario; a user can search on his smartphone, see the search result text snippet, tap to visit the website, but where’s that content just seen in the search results…? It’s nowhere to be seen. In Google’s Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) the text shown is taken from the desktop version of the website, not the mobile version, the mobile version may not show this content (with media queries it’s easy to show/hide content dependent on a device). And that is a bad user experience and we all know how much Google hates that!
So post ‘Mobilegeddon’ Google is now currently experimenting with a new mobile-first indexing system.
From the mouth of Google
“To make our results more useful, we’ve begun experiments to make our index mobile-first. Although our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our 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 our results. Of course, while our index will be built from mobile documents, we’re going to continue to build a great search experience for all users, whether they come from mobile or desktop devices”
Mobile searches by industry
Here’s more from Google on the subject of mobile-first indexing
So in short, whilst the new indexing system will be mobile first it should not take anything away from the desktop search results but of course, you can improve your online presence by making sure your website is not only mobile friendly, but with great mobile friendly content too. If your website is already responsive (and uses the same content as the desktop), then you are good to go, thankfully most of our clients are set, we have been building responsive websites as standard since 2014 Learn more about our mobile design services here.
So, when can we expect to see things kicking in?
UPDATE Google announced in its blog that roll out of Mobile-first indexing begun March 2018. Read more from the blog post here.
Is your website mobile ready, does it show the best content for mobile-first search results? Contact us today for a free consultation – we can review your current website and give you an honest, unbiased review 786. 379. 4041, email us or use our contact us form here.
