Google starts rolling out its mobile-first index!
Today was a big day for Google, as the search engine giant finally started rolling out its so-called “mobile-first” index and it’s definitely going to change the way websites are ranked in search engine results pages. But hey, what does this exactly mean?
Focus on mobile
As you probably know, in order to add pages to its index, Google crawls your site regularly, through a bot, a check out what links are pointing to your page. Until now, this bot was doing everything as a regular desktop users, but starting from now on, Google will crawl your site as a mobile users, according to Entrepreneur. And this, ladies and gents, is huge!
First of all, let’s not forget that the mobile version of a website can be completely different from the mobile one, and some links might not appear, depending on their position on the desktop site. The bad part about this is that some websites might be affected in a negative way and drop in rankings, since Google’s bot won’t be able to see all links. Our advice: check again the mobile version of your websites!
Besides this, Google will also put a higher emphasis on how quick the mobile version of your website loads. Be very, but very careful at this, since it’s an important ranking signal!
Finally, one quick tip for all you SEOs out there! If you’re planning to start a new campaign, focus on optimizing for mobile, since this is the prime audience right now.
OK, but why are they doing it?
What if we told you that the answer is very simple? In 2016, people are using mobile devices more than you can think! Apparently, the number of searches made from mobile devices is way bigger than those made from desktops. So yeah, here’s your answer. Google wants to deliver a top experience for its top audience.