Google Mobile first index will be ready in a year
Within the next 12 months Google will complete the switch of all sites to mobile-first index. The messages received by webmasters in Google Search Console are announcing it, also reporting possible issues with this kind of site indexing based on the mobile version. A theme we have been talking about for almost exactly two years, that is from the moment when – once ended a long experimental phase – the roll-out has officially started, but perhaps there are still aspects to be clarified and information to give on this process: let’s see together the elements not to be underestimated, also from an SEO point of view!
What is Google mobile first index
It was 2016 when Mountain View started testing on “indexing with priority to contents for mobile devices”, which became the system adopted by Googlebot as a priority since July 1st, 2019 for all new websites, meaning with this adjective both those just put online and those just discovered and emerged in Google Search.
Simply put, the Google bot now mostly uses smartphone agent to evaluate the version of content for mobile devices for indexing and ranking purposes, because most users access Google Search via a mobile device.
What we need to know on mobile-first index
How mobile indexing insertion works
Up until now, not all websites have been enabled for mobile-first indexing, there is no way of knowing exactly when a website will be moved and there is nothing we can do to make the process faster. Moreover, just as we cannot act to force the inclusion of a website in this index, we cannot even request the subsequent exclusion.
It is Google that decides whether a website is ready for mobile-first indexing based on content, links, images and videos, as well as structured data and other metadata.