Gary Illyes announced at Pubcon last week that Google will switch from a desktop first index to a mobile first index “within months“- where it will index the mobile versions of pages and not the desktop version for their primary index.
To be clear, this is not in effect currently, but Gary Illyes (and other Google representatives) tend to do this when these big updates happen – just like with mobilegeddon, for example.
What Does This Mean For Website Owners
If it hasn’t been abundantly clear to you yet, then this should do it. You should have a mobile-first marketing strategy. Everything from responsive design to app indexing to AMP, Google has been pushing mobile for a couple years now so it is not a surprise that this is actually starting to happen.
Website owners and developers now need to think about how their content is displayed on mobile devices. Some websites tend to hide content on their website to prevent long page scrolls and could lose traffic now because of this change. Websites that have different URLs for their mobile website need to think about how this new change will impact them as well.
Are elements being blocked? Are links easily clickable? Is it easy to read? How does your menu work? Are you hiding content behind a “read more” link? All these questions need to be discussed with your web development team or firm before this update happens.
