What do you need to know about the new mobile index?

Late last year Google confirmed that due to the prevalence of mobile search, it would transition its default index from the longstanding desktop index to a mobile one.

While rumblings about when and how the new mobile first index would roll out have been persistent, the search engine has been customarily vague. Until now. The Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, Gary Illyes has confirmed that ‘a few sites’ have already switched over to the new mobile index, marking the first phase of the landmark rollout. If you aren’t yet prepared for this change, read on to find out everything you need to know.

Because mobile searches are more popular than desktop, Google wants to ensure it’s crawling and ranking sites in a manner that makes sense for its users. That means it will no longer judge your website on how well its optimised for users on desktop PCs, instead, it’ll crawl and analyse your site as a mobile user.

Google has long since encouraged entrepreneurs, business owners and webmasters to optimise their site for mobile. That means you should already have taken steps to provide a great user experience for those visiting your site from a mobile device. Considerations such as implementing AMP, doing all you can to speed up page loading times and ensuring forms work well and are easier to complete on smaller screens are all examples of mobile optimisation.

Google will still use the index used now – it just won’t be the default index. That means if you haven’t prioritised the mobile user experience (and as a mobile app reseller, why would you not?!) now is the time to do so.

We don’t expect that sites which are well optimised and ranking well in the SERPS will suddenly drop like a stone and Google has said it hopes to minimise change as much as possible.

As we have already noted, the mobile user experience and mobile optimisation should have been on your radar for a while. The confirmation that some sites have now switched to mobile indexing means that your focus should be on mobile optimisation. You’ll need to consider mobile ranking signals much more carefully moving forwards – which means being aware of using less content, fewer heavier image files, more AMP and faster loading pages as soon as possible.

While no-one expected that some sites would already be swapped to the mobile first index, the accelerated timeframe should not be a cause for concern. Continue to follow mobile SEO best practise to ensure your site is in the best possible standing when the main migration takes place – this is expected to be early next year.