Google is set to give greater prominence to mobile when ranking sites in its searches, making its index “mobile first”.
The majority of searches on Google are currently conducted on a mobile device but when Google looks to evaluate a page’s ranking in its search it looks at the desktop version of the site.
This change of policy means Google will soon primarily index mobile content and use that to decide how to rank its results – regardless of whether you’re searching on a mobile or desktop. If there is no mobile site available it will then fall back onto desktop.
Google told Search Engine Land: “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.”
Experts at Search Engine Land said there will no longer be any type of ‘mobile friendly’ adjustment just for mobile users.
“Effectively, if you’re not mobile-friendly, that will have an impact even on how you appear for desktop searchers,” they said.
If you do not have a mobile site then Google will simply use the desktop version to rank the site. If you have a mobile responsive site or one that dynamically changes, there is nothing that you need to do.
For more information on the test, the proposed changes and what you need to do, check out Search Engine Land’s article here.
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