We’ve been hearing a lot about mobile-first indexing lately, as the latest development in Google’s ever-continuing efforts to make the web more mobile-friendly and reflect user behavior trends.
But there’s also a lot of confusion around what this means for the average business owner. Do you have to change anything? Everything? If your site is mobile-friendly, will that be good enough?
IS THIS GOING TO BE ANOTHER MOBILEGEDDON?!!
In this post I’ll go over the basics of what “mobile-first indexing” means, and what you may need to do about it. I’ll also answer some frequently asked questions about mobile-first indexing and what it means for our SEO efforts.
What is “mobile-first indexing”?
Mobile-first indexing is exactly what it sounds like. It just means that the mobile version of your website becomes the starting point for what Google includes in their index, and the baseline for how they determine rankings. If you monitor crawlbot traffic to your site, you may see an increase in traffic from Smartphone Googlebot, and the cached versions of pages will usually be the mobile version of the page.
It’s called “mobile-first” because it’s not a mobile-only index: for instance, if a site doesn’t have a mobile-friendly version, the desktop site can still be included in the index. But the lack of a mobile-friendly experience could impact negatively on the rankings of that site, and a site with a better mobile experience would potentially receive a rankings boost even for searchers on a desktop.
You may also want to think of the phrase “mobile-first” as a reference to the fact that the mobile version will be considered the primary version of your website. So if your mobile and desktop versions are equivalent — for instance if you’ve optimized your content for mobile, and/or if you use responsive design — this change should (in theory) not have any significant impact in terms of your site’s performance in search results.
However it does represent a fundamental reversal in the way Google is thinking about your website content and how to prioritize crawling and indexation. Remember that up until now the desktop site was considered the primary version (similar to a canonical URL) and the mobile site was treated as an “alternate” version for a particular use case. This is why Google encouraged webmasters with a separate mobile site (m.domain.com) to implement switchboard tags (which indicated the existence of a mobile URL version with a special rel=alternate tag). Google might not even make the effort to crawl and cache the mobile versions of all of these pages, as they could simply display that mobile URL to mobile searchers.
This view of the desktop version as the primary one often meant in practice that the desktop site would be prioritized by SEOs and marketing teams and was treated as the most comprehensive version of a website, with full content, structured data markup, hreflang (international tags), the majority of backlinks, etc.; while the mobile version might have lighter content, and/or not include the same level of markup and structure, and almost certainly would not receive the bulk of backlinks and external attention.
What should I do about mobile-first indexing?
The first thing to know is that there’s no need to panic. So far this change is only in the very earliest stages of testing, and is being rolled out very gradually only to websites which Google considers to be “ready” enough for this change to have a minimal impact.
According to Google’s own latest guidance on the topic, if your website is responsive or otherwise identical in its desktop and mobile versions, you may not have to do anything differently (assuming you’re happy with your current rankings!).
That said, even with a totally responsive site, you’ll want to ensure that mobile page speed and load time are prioritized and that images and other (potentially) dynamic elements are optimized correctly for the mobile experience. Note that with mobile-first indexing, content which is collapsed or hidden in tabs, etc. due to space limitations will not be treated differently than visible content (as it may have been previously), since this type of screen real estate management is actually a mobile best practice.
If you have a separate mobile site, you’ll want to check the following:
- Content: make sure your mobile version has all the high-quality, valuable content that exists on your desktop site. This could include text, videos and images. Make sure the formats used on the mobile version are crawlable and indexable (including alt-attributes for images).
- Structured data: you should include the same structured data markup on both the mobile and desktop versions of the site. URLs shown within structured data on mobile pages should be the mobile version of the URL. Avoid adding unnecessary structured data if it isn’t relevant to the specific content of a page.
- Metadata: ensure that titles and meta descriptions are equivalent on both versions of all pages.
- Note that the official guidance says “equivalent” rather than “identical” - you may still want to optimize your mobile titles for shorter character counts, but make sure the same information and relevant keywords are included.
- Hreflang: if you use rel=hreflang for internationalization, your mobile URLs' hreflang annotations should point to the mobile version of your country or language variants, and desktop URLs should point to the desktop versions.
- Social metadata: OpenGraph tags, Twitter cards and other social metadata should be included on the mobile version as well as the desktop version.
- XML and media sitemaps: ensure that any links to sitemaps are accessible from the mobile version of the site. This also applies to robots directives (robots.txt and on-page meta-robots tags) and potentially even trust signals, like links to your privacy policy page.
- Search Console verification: if you have only verified your desktop site in Google Search Console, make sure you also add and verify the mobile version.
- App indexation: if you have app indexation set up for your desktop site, you may want to ensure that you have verified the mobile version of the site in relation to app association files, etc.
- Server capacity: Make sure that your host servers can handle increased crawl rate.
- (This only applies for sites with their mobile version on a separate host, such as m.domain.com.)
- Switchboard tags: if you currently have mobile switchboard tags implemented, you do not need to change this implementation. These should remain as they are.
Common questions about mobile-first indexing
Is mobile-first indexing adding mobile pages to a separate mobile index?
With mobile-first indexing, there is only one index (the same one Google uses now). The change to mobile-first indexing does not generate a new “mobile-first” index, nor is it creating a separate “mobile index” with a “desktop index” remaining active. Instead, it simply changes how content is added to the existing index.
Is the mobile-first index live and affecting my site now? If not, when does it go live?
Google has been experimenting with this approach to indexing on a small number of sites, which were selected based on perceived “readiness”. A wider rollout is likely going to take a long time and in June 2017, Gary Illyes stated that it will probably take a few years before “we reach an index that is only mobile-first.”
Google has also stated the following on the Webmasters Blog, in a blog post dated Dec 18 2017:
“We will be evaluating sites independently on their readiness for mobile-first indexing based on the above criteria and transitioning them when ready. This process has already started for a handful of sites and is closely being monitored by the search team.
“We continue to be cautious with rolling out mobile-first indexing. We believe taking this slowly will help webmasters get their sites ready for mobile users, and because of that, we currently don't have a timeline for when it's going to be completed.”
Will Google only use my mobile site to determine my rankings?
Mobile-first means that the mobile version will be considered the primary version when it comes to how rankings are determined. However, there may be circumstances where the desktop version could be taken into consideration (for instance, if you don’t have a mobile version of a page).
That being said, you will potentially still see varying ranking results between mobile search results and desktop search results, so you’ll still want to track both. (In the same way that now, Google primarily uses the desktop site to determine rankings but you still want to track mobile rankings as these vary from desktop rankings based on user behavior and other factors).
When might Google use the desktop site to determine rankings vs. the mobile site?
The primary use case I’ve seen referred to so far is that they will use the desktop site to determine rankings when there is no mobile version.
It is possible that for websites where the desktop version has additional ranking information (such as backlinks), that information could also be taken into consideration - but there is no guarantee that they will crawl or index the desktop version once they’ve seen the mobile version, and I haven’t seen any official statements that this would be the case.
Therefore one of the official recommendations is that once the mobile-first indexing rollout happens, if you’re in the process of building your mobile site or have a “placeholder” type mobile version currently live it would actually be better to have no mobile site than a broken or incomplete one. In this case, you should wait to launch your mobile site until it is fully ready.
What if I don’t have a mobile version of my site?
If you don’t have a mobile version of your site and your desktop version is not mobile-friendly, your content can still be indexed; however you may not rank as well in comparison to mobile-friendly websites. This may even negatively impact your overall rankings on desktop search as well as mobile search results because it will be perceived as having a poorer user experience than other sites (since the crawler will be a “mobile” crawler).
What could happen to sites with a large desktop site and a small mobile site? Will content on your desktop site that does not appear on the mobile version be indexed and appear for desktop searches?
The end goal for this rollout is that the index will be based predominantly on crawling mobile content. If you have a heavily indexed desktop version, they’re not going to suddenly purge your desktop content from the existing index and start fresh with just your thin mobile site indexed; but the more you can ensure that your mobile version contains all relevant and valuable content, the more likely it is to continue to rank well, particularly as they cut back on crawling desktop versions of websites.
How does this change ranking factors and strategy going forward?
This may impact a variety of ranking factors and strategy in the future; Cindy Krum at Mobile Moxie has written two excellent articles on what could be coming in the future around this topic.
Cindy talks about the idea that mobile-first indexing may be “an indication that Google is becoming less dependent on traditional links and HTML URLS for ranking.” It seems that Google is moving away from needing to rely so much on a “URL” system of organizing content, in favor of a more API type approach based on “entities” (thanks, structured data!) rather than URL style links. Check out Cindy’s posts for more explanation of how this could impact the future of search and SEO.
Is there a difference between how responsive sites and separate mobile sites will be treated?
Yes and no. The main difference will be in terms of how much work you have to do to get ready for this change.
If you have a fully responsive site, you should already have everything present on your mobile version that is currently part of the desktop version, and your main challenge will simply be to ensure that the mobile experience is well optimized from a user perspective (e.g. page speed, load time, navigation, etc).
With a separate mobile site, you’ll need to make sure that your mobile version contains everything that your desktop site does, which could be a lot of work depending on your mobile strategy so far.
Will this change how I should serve ads/content/etc. on my mobile site?
If your current approach to ads is creating a slow or otherwise poor user experience you will certainly need to address that.
If you currently opt to hide some of your mobile site content in accordions or tabs to save space, this is actually not an issue as this content will be treated in the same way as if it was loaded fully visible (as long as the content is still crawlable/accessible).
Does this change how I use rel=canonical/switchboard tags?
No. For now, Google has stated that if you have already implemented switchboard tags, you should leave them as they are.
Has this overview helped you to feel more prepared for the shift to mobile-first indexing? Are there any questions you still have?
Be sure to check out my podcast episode about mobile-first indexing on MozPod:
well explained. So basically if you are already with responsive design, just focus on user experience.
thank you. it cleared many doubts.
Perhaps not really. This is more about how fast than how easy or pleasing it is to use? I wouldn't use any metaphors...
Thanks tecocraft2017, I'm glad it was helpful in making things clearer! Yes, if you already have a responsive design, you'll just want to make sure that mobile experience is as good as possible (this includes things like speed but also usability more broadly).
Thank you for sharing this up-to-the-minute information on yet another factor to be aware of for SEO and page ranking. We can't stress enough to clients the importance of having a mobile-responsive website and now more than ever with this new information. Thanks again!
This is very interesting. Sure, every websites should now be responsive.
The thing is which mobile structure should we choose?
-A seperate domain (m.domain.com): I think this is kind of a pain to work with. We have to think about the backlinks will generally point to your non-mobile site, adding rel tags, tracking boths sites seperately in Google Serach Console.
-A responsive site: This is the one I prefer to work with, but I am not sure if it is always the best solution for SEO.
-An AMP page: I've helped few sites to settle with AMP, some of which I regretted because it made a bad user experience, and create more trouble than anything when used with Google Tag Manager.
Can you tell me which would be the mobile SEO best practice between the three options, and if it is really worth the design and integration efforts?
Thank you
Hi Jean-Christophe, thanks for the question! Ideally a responsive site is the cleanest approach at this point, as long as you can provide an optimal UX for mobile users. The reason is because as you mentioned, a separate domain makes twice the work and as Sachin noted above, it's unclear what will happen with backlinks that point to the desktop version when it comes to links as a ranking factor.
***It's important to note that an AMP implementation is not an alternative to those other two (m. and responsive) - it is an add-on that you may wish to implement if your targeted SERPs have AMP carousels or feature AMP content in some way. So you might have a m.domain.com site and also AMP versions of the content, and you might have a responsive site and AMP versions of the content, but you shouldn't have AMP as your *only* mobile-friendly implementation.
Hi
Thanks for sharing a detailed view on this subject. And I really like the Q.A section of this post. Totally cleared the cobweb.
Best Regards
Thanks SearchBerg, glad it was helpful!
thanks for making this post Bridget !! It will help me secure in improving my results of organic positioning. As always, a pleasure to read you!!
What constitutes the definition of a mobile site so far as the breakpoints in a responsive site are concerned?
For example, my site has breakpoints at 375, 650, 700, 950, 1279, 1370.
375, 650, 700, 950 are essentially breakpoints that serve mobile devices. 1279, 1370, desktop.
Would Google in this instance only crawl the smallest breakpoint for mobile-first indexing, i.e., 375, and ignore the rest, i.e., 650, 700, 950, 1279, 1370?
Or would it crawl all of the mobile breakpoints, i.e., 375, 650, 700, 950, and ignore 1279, 1370?
Hi Chuck, my understanding is that the Smartphone Googlebot looks like a smartphone device. It used to spoof an iPhone, in Apr 2016 they changed to spoof an Android device. So whatever version an Android phone user would see, that's what Googlebot will see when it crawls as a mobile crawler.
Thanks Bridget. So I take that to mean that it will crawl both the 375 and 650 breakpoints on my site… please let me know if that is mistaken!
I think this has to be with the google AMP, a way we could all fix al mobile under their standars
True, I am personally using responsive design and AMP (there is a great plug-in for that) with wordpress and I would say that the ranking is not negatively affected because it follows these standards, it isn't positively affected either.
nice post!
@gregbot I have to agree with you, I saw it ony my site too - having AMP does not negatively affect your page rankings but it also has no positiv effect, eventhough Google wanted us to believe that it is so important.
Hi Gregbot and Abel, thanks for your comments!
Because I've been seeing a lot of comments here about AMP, I want to just note a couple things:
- whether or not you use AMP isn't actually related to the mobile-first index, because the mobile-first index isn't crawling your site for AMP pages, they're looking at whether your actual site is mobile-friendly or not.
- AMP is not the same as having a mobile-friendly site/mobile-friendly content, it's simply a separate format that allows you to get your content into certain SERP features like News carousels, and cached by Google, and usually will significantly increase pageload speed. So it isn't really claiming to improve baseline rankings and you probably won't see any shifts there. But it may mean your content gets seen in those carousels which are at the top of the SERP, similar to a position 0 featured answer.
- if you implement AMP using a WP plugin, you'll want to be very careful to test that implementation. Eric Enge at StoneTemple has written a great article all about AMP and whether it's relevant for you (and also info about how to ensure that your implementation is correctly set up if you use a WP plugin: https://moz.com/blog/amp-digital-marketing-2018
Excellent guide, I really enjoyed it till the last. Thank you very much Bridget Randolph.
In 2018, Mobile friendly themes and AMP posts are very important for every blog owners. It has many benefits and it will also help you increase user experience.
Great post!!! I need to adjust my sites for mobiles and this guide is going to be so helpful for this task.
Thanks Bridget
Hi Bridget, yes, mobile indexing and SEO is extremely important, considering how so many users are now using their cell phones when searching for things.
brilliant article!
And RE: mobile first and mobile-indexing-first, since there are quite a lot of wordpress websites out there, the amp plugin and other mobile plugins will do the trick. But in general it is good to learn to write and create content with the mobile in view...
Finally, as we all know it, these rules for the mobile first indexing are constantly being improved and also changing.... so it's good to keep an eye on what others do out there and what the up-to-date trends and rules are....
HI,
Thanks for great stuff.
I believe that we should opt for native responsive design as compared to desktop version. It will help us to make the relevancy good.
Very nice post highlighting the most important factors related to Mobile-first indexing.
What about the backlinks?
All external links point to desktop site as of now, our m subdomain for mobile has no backlinks. Will this affect the rankings once our site shifts to mobile first indexing.
2nd question, should we try to maintain that future backlinks should be directed to m. version(mobile version) of the website.
Hi Sachin, this is a great question and I'll be totally honest - I haven't been able to find any documentation on this topic. From what I can tell, this is an area Google is still figuring out (although of course if any readers here know more info on this, I'd love to hear it!). Of course with a responsive design, the domain would be the same for backlinks, so you may want to consider whether it would be possible to start that process of making your desktop site responsive, since that would potentially avoid the issue altogether. But Google is well aware that many sites with separate mobile sites have the majority of their backlinks pointing to the desktop site, and there is still the possibility that there will be some desktop site signals incorporated into the rankings as needed. Sorry not to have a more concrete answer but I'm sure as this starts rolling out we will hear a lot more coming out about the topic of backlinks.
Good post and clarifier on the mobile theme and desktop. I think that in the end everything has its foundation in the content and a good general SEO strategy, and not just focus on one device.
Although the mobile user experience must take care of it and make it as effective as possible, SEO goes to the general level of all devices.
Thanks for the post
Uns greeting
Very deep Information.
Mobile is more handy then desktop in Indian that's why traffic also come higher then desktop. That is the reason people have to work for mobile friendly website.
You should be ashamed of yourself if you run a site that isn’t mobile friendly in the year 2018. Not only will you more than likely feel a negative impact when this switch occurs, but you have also been actively ignoring over 55 percent of web users.
It is time, make your site mobile-friendly, preferably responsive, and avoid taking a very brisk walk down a perilous road.
Great guide. I leave it saved
In Spain, the traffic for desktop devices is still higher than for mobile devices, but we are moving forward so that this circumstance will change soon.
You are right! I hope I can have my sites ready for mobile when the situation turns, because that´s going to happen really soon ;-)
If your theme is mobile optimized i don't think you should be worried about this index.
Mobile optimized doesn't mean everything Bridget listed above is already correct on your mobile version of the website, especially for m. sites.
Very good article, personally I think that in 2018, mobile SEO will be more important than computer SEO
Mobile friendly websites are a must! Thanks for pointing that out. AMP pages will probably also be a good ranking and visibility factor in a near future.