Google Prioritizing Mobile Over Desktop Search
Update: July 1st, 2018
( Article created November 7, 2016 )
After a year and a half of testing, Google started rolling out its mobile-first indexing algorithm. Mobile-first indexing means Google will use the mobile version of the content of a website for indexing and ranking over the desktop view. Before now, Google would index based on the desktop version of a web page's content when evaluating how relevant a page was to a user's search query.
The majority of users online now access Google via a mobile device, the index will now use the mobile version of a page's content from now on. This is not a separate index as Google says, they continue to only use one index.
You can read more from a December 2017 Google blog article here. The important take away from that page is the "...sites that make use of responsive web design and correctly implement dynamic serving (that include all of the desktop content and markup) generally don't have to do anything."
More on Responsive Web Design by Google
----November 2016----
In the coming months, Google is separating the index of search results into two versions, one for mobile and one for desktop.
The search index for mobile will be updated more rapidly and the desktop verion will be updated less frequently.
- Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) tweeted...
- "Google has now told @sengineland that the launch of its new mobile-only index will happen in 'months'.
- You can also read the article on Search Engine Land "Within months, Google to divide its index, giving mobile users better & fresher content" at: http://searchengineland.com/google-divide-index-giving-mobile-users-better-fresher-content-261037.
Source: Searchenginejournal.com.
