Mobile First Indexing
After a lot of talking, Google has finally started rolling out the mobile first indexing bot to the masses. Websites that Google considers “mobile ready” will be moved to the new indexing style over the next few months.
Websites that aren’t mobile ready still have some time to make the necessary changes required but that time will rapidly run out. After all the mobile ready sites have been moved across whether your website is ready or not, it will be moved.
What is mobile first indexing?
When Google crawls your website, the current indexing bot views your webpages as if it was looking at them with a desktop computer browser. The new mobile first indexing bot will view the same pages as if it was looking at them on a mobile phone’s browser.
Google is implementing this change is to reflect how the digital world has changed. More people now access the web through a mobile device then they do a desktop computer or laptop. Google first noted this change back in 2015 when search queries performed on mobile devices overtook search queries being performed on desktop devices.
If your website is already mobile friendly, then this change in the crawling will probably not affect you in any way.
What if my website isn’t mobile friendly?
If you’re not sure if your website is mobile friendly I recommend you go to the free Google Mobile Friendly Test tool and test your website and review the results carefully, sometimes they can be a little confusing.
The other thing you should do is pick your phone up and have a look at your website and make sure it works correctly. The picture below is a guideline from Google on how things should and shouldn’t look.
If the results say that your website is not mobile friendly, then you have some work to do. Depending on the platform your website has been built on, will determine how hard it will be to make your website mobile friendly. Most themes on WordPress and Square Space for example are built to be mobile responsive from the start. There are also WordPress plugins that can convert older themes to make them mobile friendly. Proprietary Content Management System (CMS) platforms are from our experience, a nightmare to attempt to change, if your even allowed access to customise the theme.
Another way to make your website mobile friendly (which we consider an outdated method) is to have a separate mobile website on a subdomain, something like m.yourwebsite.com.au. When a user clicks on your website it will detect your screen size and redirect you to the right website.
In most cases that we have seen the m. version of a website is normally a cut down copy of the main site. In that case Google will only crawl what is on the m. version first and probably won’t display your whole site.
An example of a website using an m. subdomain is car manufacturers website Holden. Their desktop version of the website currently has 2790 pages indexed on Google. Their mobile site is a cut down version on a m. subdomain and if it were to move to the mobile first indexing bot Google will only see 46 pages on the website. They will lose 2744 pages that are currently indexed.
What do I do now?
If your website is mobile ready, then you can sit back and monitor your website. Keep an eye out for the notification in Search Console that your website has moved to the mobile first indexing bot. When you get the notification, monitor your websites visits, indexing and your rankings and act as required.
If your website is not mobile friendly, then you need to make some quick decisions. If you’re on a CMS like WordPress then a transition to a mobile friendly site will be easier than a proprietary CMS. Doing nothing will only provide your website visitors who use their phone with a bad user experience and they probably won’t return. Doing nothing will also ultimately hurt your websites Google rankings.
If you are not sure where you need to start, don’t hesitate to contact us, we can help you’re your website mobile friendly or advise you on the best course of action.
DNA Web Development : Your Success is Our Business
Written by Dave Stansfield - 1 May 2018