Google continues mobile first roll out

Google has continued to roll out its first major change to its index in over a decade by initiating a wide scale roll out of its mobile first index. The search engine has confirmed that it has now started a migration of sites to the new index, following small scale migration towards the end of last year.

Google says that those sites now being migrated are the ones that follow mobile SEO best practise and, the sites being migrated are being notified via the Search Console.In an official blog post, Google software engineer Fan Zhang recapped some key points regarding the mobile first index and what this means for website design and web site owners. Here’s an overview in case you have missed any of the notices issued over the last year and a half:

·Mobile index is now becoming more common and migration to the mobile first index is taking place more broadly.·Sites now being migrated are part of a major wave being moved to mobile-first – this is the biggest transition since talk first emerged of a mobile-first index around 18 months ago.·Sites that are following mobile best practise are being moved currently·If your site or sites receives a notification via Search Console that it is being moved to mobile-first indexing, you shouldn’t confuse this with a rankings boost.·Google says there is no ranking benefit with mobile-first indexing and those sites still on desktop indexing should not expect to be at a disadvantage for ranking.·Mobile-first indexing operates independently to the search engine’s assessment of mobile friendliness (which can impact on ranking).·Whether you’ve been migrated or not, you should prioritise fast loading content as this is beneficial for all website visitors, whether they are accessing your site from a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet or a traditional desktop or laptop computer.·If your content is made to be mobile friendly, that can benefit your search positions for those users accessing Google from a mobile device·Since 2015, Google has used the level of mobile friendliness a piece of content achieves as a ranking factor.·From this coming July, slow loading content could be penalised on both desktop and mobile search with poor ranking positions.·If your site only has desktop content, it will continue to be indexed (but as above you should make mobile friendly content a priority to remain relevant and avoid losing customers or visitors).