What is Mobile First Indexing?

Google used the crawling system to index, rank and find pages based on their desktop versions until now. This caused a lot of hassle on mobile devices, hence the introduction of Google AMP.  AMP was the first mobile-first indexing and results usually showed up faster if you had an AMP page. However now, Google changed their algorithm to find and index mobile dedicated pages faster.

Mobile first indexing means that Google will use the mobile version of a page when indexing and ranking to better help mobile users find what they are looking for.

Does this affect my current page?

Yes. At the moment your page is indexed in Google based on this new algorithm. Google does not have a mobile-first index that separates from their main index. But, increasingly they will be using mobile versions of content more.

Do I need a Google AMP version or a Mobile Dedicated Version?

For sites that have AMP and non-AMP pages, Google will prefer to index the mobile version of the non-AMP page. Sites that are not in this initial wave don’t need to panic. Mobile-first indexing is about how we gather content, not about how content is ranked. Content gathered by mobile-first indexing has no ranking advantage over mobile content that’s not yet gathered this way or desktop content. Moreover, if you only have desktop content, you will continue to be represented in our index.

So it’s not really important if my rank isn’t affected?

On the contrary, as we wrote in a previous article, Page Speed will be a factor in Google Mobile Search.  Updating your page to a mobile friendly version is absolutely essential for the future developments.

Crowning Mobiles …. Kings of the World?

That seems the what Google is heading for. As more and more users browse the web from their website you can expect that Google will start ranking pages much higher if they have a great mobile experience. It’s clear with the announcement of the Page Speed Factor and the Mobile First Rank that Google is slowly but surely heading towards that direction.

Our suggestion? Get a mobile version of your business today, it’s easy to edit, maintain and it will avoid you having to pay extra in the future as this is bound to happen any day.