If you have been following the tech news lately, you must have heard about Google Mobile First indexing, which was officially enabled for websites from July 2019. On July 5th 2024, Google completely switched to mobile-first indexing. What this means is that all websites on the web from now on will be crawled by the mobile Googlebot. In other words, the mobile version of your business website will act as the first information source about your domain for Google.
So what does mobile first indexing mean? Mobile index first is the process by which Google primarily uses a website’s mobile version as the basis for indexing and ranking rather than the desktop version. Even though the mobile-first indexing update was enabled in 2019, there is a lot of history behind it. In 2015, the search engine giant launched the “Mobilegeddon” update. This marked the introduction of mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor.
The company started testing the mobile first indexing Google feature on select websites in 2016, which was followed by a gradual rollout in 2018. The transition to mobile-first indexing was initially slated to be completed by 2020, however, it was delayed due to COVID-19. After a series of steps, the process was completed in July 2024. Now, as we are mid 2025, it is important to know that websites without mobile accessibility become at risk of not being indexed by the search engine crawlers.
Therefore, it’s highly recommended to make your website mobile-friendly by implementing various mobile-first indexing best practices to enable Google mobile first indexing, else it could experience significant drops in search rankings and vanish from search results in the future, leading to a potential loss of organic traffic.
The answer is in the name itself. Mobile-first design is a strategy web developers employ to develop a site’s mobile version first. After that, it is customized to fit on desktop screens. The purpose of mobile-first design is to maximise site usability on smaller devices, which is increasingly important for mobile first SEO. Developers employ several practices when implementing a mobile-first design, and some of them are listed below:
Designing for mobile devices ensures faster site loading times. The reason for this is that the mobile-first approach is often focused on a minimalistic design, thus reducing load times. Apart from that, it benefits Google and other search engines as most of them are increasingly adopting a mobile index first approach for ranking websites.
Implementing a mobile-first approach ensures faster performance because the developers can optimize media files and prioritize the core user experience for the constraints of mobile devices.
Despite the benefits, it is essential to understand the potential mobile first index problems that might arise if the user experience isn’t consistent in terms of the content, site structure, and overall performance.
You must have understood what is mobile first indexing and its benefits. But, do you know how exactly this concept works in the background?
Take any website, it will have two versions: desktop and mobile. Before the mobile index first scenario, whenever Google’s search engine crawlers did the indexing process, the desktop version was indexed as the main site. Now, things have changed, and the mobile version is indexed first.
If that’s the case, you might ask, then what about the desktop version? Is it being separately indexed? Well no. The mobile-first indexing Google process is still the same, but it has been updated to prioritize mobile sites over desktop ones.
Google started priortizing mobile devices from 2015 onwards by launching its mobile-friendly update. This was a significant step in Google mobile seo. It was followed by the introduction of mobile-first crawling and indexing in November 2016, which marked a shift to Google mobile first seo. In other words, it took over 6 years to finally implement this update and roll it out in its entirety. Here’s a more detailed timeline on the Google mobile-friendly update:
April 2015 – The Mobilegeddon update was launched by Google
November 2016 – Mobile-first indexing was announced and began testing on some sites.
March 2018 – Started rolling out the mobile-first indexing after months of testing.
December 2018 – 50% of the websites on search results have migrated to mobile-first indexing.
May 2019 – Mobile-first indexing becomes the default for new domains.
March 2020 – Mobile first indexing Google announced for all sites starting September 2020
November 2021 – Due to unexpected challenges, the mobile-first indexing launch was postponed from March 2021 to a future date, creating uncertainty.
October 2023 – Mobile-first indexing finally rolled out. Also acknowledged that a small set of sites don’t work on mobile devices.
June 2024 – Finally migrated to mobile-first indexing for Google Search. The small set of sites which initially didn’t support mobile, along with any other site, will be crawled using the Googlebot Smartphone crawler after July 5 2024.
By opening GSC and navigating to settings, you can identify the crawler in the About section, where it tells you if and when your website switched to mobile indexing.
As from the above timeline, it is clear that google mobile first indexing has become the default for sites since July 2019. But there might be certain sites that might have mobile first index problems and may not have been crawled at all. If your site is one among them, you can check if Google has moved your site to mobile-first indexing. If it is enabled for your site, you should see a notification like the one below in the Google Search Console.
If you can’t see any signs or want to know how to prepare for mobile first index, follow these steps: Open Google Search Console and do a URL inspection for one of your webpages. If you see something like this, as shown below, Google has done mobile-first indexing on your site.
For those asking what is mobile first-indexing, Google defines the process in which a website’s mobile version is crawled by the search engine for indexing and ranking. So what will happen once google mobile first indexing becomes effective? There will be consequences and how well-designed and high-performing your desktop site may be, its mobile counterpart will now hold the key to determining your search engine rankings and visibility.
Okay, how does mobile-first indexing affect SEO? The first thing is that websites designed for mobile devices will be given higher priority in mobile-first indexing, therefore, the website must maintain the same quality as your desktop version.
This shows the growing popularity of fast-loading, user-friendly and responsive websites and therefore when making optimizations, it has to be specifically focused on making it mobile-friendly first. Google has realised the evolving digital landscape and started making the transition to mobile-first indexing way back in 2016.
Now that it’s confirmed that creating a mobile-friendly site is the only way to stay in the game, 3 configurations can be chosen to create one. This includes choosing a responsive design, a dynamic serving or separate URLs. However, googles mobile first indexing update recommends the responsive design because it is easy to implement and maintain. Also, the mobile and desktop pages are identical and adjust to various screen sizes.
Shifting to mobile-first indexing means giving more priority to mobile design, adaptability, mobile-first UI/UX optimization, etc. This effectively translates to implementing technical optimization strategies and ensuring mobile accessibility.
Alright, you are now familiar with the Google mobile first indexing and the various configurations to make your website mobile accessible. Let’s explore the various mobile-first indexing best practices which you can implement to make your website mobile-ready.
When a user visits your website and struggles to locate content by having to zoom in and out, this is a clear sign that your website contents aren’t optimized for mobile. Situations like this result in negative user experiences, which isn’t good. This is exactly why you must create content that is easier to read and navigate on small devices. Creating and optimizing content in shorter paragraphs, incorporating legible fonts and making it concise are some ways to make your content mobile-friendly.
Alright, you are now familiar with the Google mobile first indexing and the various configurations to make your website mobile accessible. Let’s explore the various mobile first indexing best practices which you can implement to make your website mobile-ready.
Another one of the most mobile first indexing tips is providing the same user experience on both mobile and desktop. Not only does this enhance user experience but also helps with indexing but it also effectively reinforces your brand’s online identity. When users visit your website on both platforms, they must encounter a unified experience, therefore, it is essential to create a user-friendly interface that seamlessly adapts to the various screen sizes thereby appealing to a wider audience.
Adding and optimizing the images and videos on your website not only helps with improved visual appeal but also helps with enhancing user experience, visibility and more. Crawlability of these elements allows Google to understand and index them with ease. Also, when choosing visual content, make sure to select widely supported formats that ensure compatibility on all devices.
Looking for useful mobile first indexing tips? This one’s for you. Having fast-loading websites on all types of network conditions and computing power is crucial to a smoother user experience and increased search engine rankings. To make that happen, you must fine-tune and optimize your website’s loading times. This is something that most users appreciate in the long run so if you notice your website becoming slow, rectifying it immediately is essential.
Even though it’s important to have Google crawl and index your website, ensuring there are no rendering issues is also crucial. Rendering allows Googlebot to properly read the code and assess the contents of your website and having issues can affect the search engine’s ability to properly process the data and make it difficult to rank in organic search results. This makes it one of the most important mobile first indexing best practices.
Despite the technology and its benefits, there are still various myths circulating about mobile-first indexing. Let us examine them below:
The first myth is that mobile-first indexing directly impacts website rankings. It doesn’t work that way because even after transitioning to mobile-first indexing, the website position doesn’t have any negative impact on Google search results. Another mobile first indexing myth is that mobile-friendliness and mobile-first indexing are considered the same, however, that isn’t true. Even though mobile-friendliness is an important ranking factor in search results, it’s not the same as mobile-first indexing.
Now that we have discussed the best practices for mobile-first indexing, let’s learn how to audit webpages using dedicated, cost-effective tools and see whether they comply with Google mobile first indexing.
Leveraging Google Search Console helps determine whether your website is crawled by Googlebot Smartphone crawler, an essential aspect of mobile-first indexing Google practices. It also provides various reports on mobile usability issues and helps identify any crawl errors. Following the steps below, you can determine whether Google crawls your website and implements mobile index first.
Open Google Search Console and the URL in the search bar. After that, click the arrow in the Page indexing section.
Scroll down to the Crawl section, where you can see the last crawl date of your site and how it was done.
Another tool to know more about what is mobile first indexing, and see how your website looks on mobile devices, is Chrome Developer Tools. These built-in tools might appear overwhelming when viewed for the first time. But they are one of the most useful web development and debugging tools to understand the technical aspects of your site and identify potential issues. You can launch the Chrome Developer Tools page with the following steps:
When Google interacts with your content, how can you know that? With Rich Results Test. This tool provides detailed insights into how the search engine interacts with your website content. What’s more, you can also find out how Google views your competitors’ content using this tool. To gain insights, all you have to do is add your site URL into the search bar.
Once you run the test, you will be presented with a detailed report highlighting important parameters. This includes a screenshot of how Google views the mobile content, along with identifying structured data, whether indexing is allowed or not, etc. You can also view the desktop version of the rich results test.
If you thought page speed is only for auditing webpage loading speed, there’s more than that. This free web-based tool from Google analyses website performance and offers detailed suggestions for improvement. The tools focus on multiple aspects such as load time, page responsiveness, and user experience.
After a detailed analysis, it provides a score from 0 to 100, in which higher scores indicate better performance. Apart from analysing both mobile and desktop versions of a site, PageSpeed Insights offers recommendations such as optimizing website speed, reducing server response time, and using browser caching.
As you know the deadline to enable Google Mobile First indexing on your website is nearing, so it has become a necessity to make your website mobile-friendly. If it ain’t optimized for mobile usability, then all the traffic, ranking, etc your website has gained will start to lose, which should be avoided at all costs.
By making necessary adjustments and fine-tuning by following Google’s recommended configuration and the strategies mentioned above, you can stay in the game and improve your search rankings. Also by optimizing your website for mobile, you can adhere to the search engine giant’s latest indexing system and give more priority to user satisfaction.
Contact us for any queries at GTECH, the best SEO Company in dubai.
Mobile-first indexing is the process by which Google chooses the mobile version of a website first for indexing and ranking in search results. The process was started as an experiment in 2015 and was officially rolled out in March 2018. As of July 2024, Google mobile first indexing has fully rolled out and migrated all websites to mobile-first indexing. The search engine giant has mentioned that all websites starting from July 5, 2024, will be subjected to mobile index first crawling and indexing.
The term “First Indexed By Google” refers to the website version, either mobile or desktop, that Google used to index. You can check whether your site is mobile-indexed by leveraging the URL inspection tool in the Google Search Console. Enter the URL of your homepage and check the “Crawled as” section. If it says “Google smartphone,” your site is crawled by Google’s mobile-first crawler; otherwise, it will be crawled by the desktop crawler.
When it comes to Google mobile first indexing vs desktop first , the difference lies in which version of the website is crawled first. In what is mobile first indexing, Google crawls and indexes the mobile version of your site first. Whereas in desktop-first indexing, the desktop version is crawled and indexed first. Despite this, most websites’ mobile versions are now indexed first. Understanding what does mobile first indexing mean is crucial for businesses that want to stay competitive in search results.
Google mobile first seo refers to the strategies involved in optimizing a website’s content and technical aspects, such as page loading speed, usability, etc, for mobile users first. Whereas the mobile-first approach is a design phase where a brand’s website is first made to fit on mobile devices first then scaled up for devices with larger screens. Both are crucial for mobile-first optimization and performance in search engines.
There are several ways to make your website mobile-friendly and align it with Google mobile friendly update guidelines. Implementing a responsive design, coupled with faster load times, avoiding mobile first index problems, and having the same content on both desktop and mobile versions. If you’re wondering how to prepare for mobile first index, do a full audit focused on mobile usability and SEO factors.
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