What Is the Mobile-First Index & Why Does it Matter?

Like it or not, Google forms the core of the SEO world and even the online world in general. It isn’t the only traffic source, of course, but it is the biggest — and for most, the most important. That’s why everyone who works in the digital industry follows Google’s actions very closely, and why anyone with a website they hope to rank well needs to be aware of major updates.

One such update that has emerged recently is mobile-first indexing. Over the last couple of years, Google has evidently put a lot of time into testing the option of using mobile-first indexing, all culminating in March’s announcement that it was beginning to roll it out to live rankings — an announcement that caused a lot of commotion.

Since then, many businesses have been left wondering what exactly mobile-first indexing means, and why it’s something they should care about. Let’s run through what this all means, and establish why you need to be making mobile-first design a priority.

What is mobile-first indexing?

When Google crawls a webpage to render and subsequently index it, it looks at it from two perspectives: that of a mobile device, and that of a desktop device. Due to the different layout and UX requirements, the typical website will look quite different on a mobile device than it does elsewhere, so the two-page snapshots will be quite distinct.

Previously, where Google has found different views of a page, it has viewed the desktop version as the primary version — indexing that content, and using the mobile assessment only for mobile-specific considerations (such as indicating mobile-friendliness in mobile searches, for instance).

Mobile-first indexing, however, is seeing Google primarily indexing the mobile version, viewing that version as the main version of the site and giving less weight to the desktop view. As noted, Google has been using mobile-first indexing for some sites since March (at the latest).

Why is this significant?

As smartphones have become more advanced and ubiquitous, mobile searches have come to dominate organic traffic, by now accounting for significantly more than 50% of the total. As such, businesses understand by now that it’s important to have a responsive website, but they have until now been able to focus on their desktop sites regarding rankings.

This meant that they could previously ensure that their mobile sites were adequate while investing far more time and effort in making their desktop sites looked excellent and worked just as well, knowing that it was ultimately the desktop versions that mattered.

In light of this change, they’ll need to completely change the way they view web design and development — making mobile layouts the main priority and allowing them to scale up to desktop size, instead of starting with desktop layouts and scaling them down.

How quickly is the change happening?

It has been happening for over six months now, but there’s no set period of adjustment and no indication of any kind of timeframe. In fact, Google indicated in 2017 that it intended to be cautious with mobile-first indexing and give webmasters time to adapt to the changing requirements, so we’re unlikely to see the entire Google index becoming mobile-first for quite some time.

That means that you probably have time to implement improvements if you’re worried about the quality of your mobile site, but don’t leave it too long, because there’s already a chance that your site will be crawled and ranked for its mobile performance at any time.

What can you do to address it?

Quite simply, you need to make sure that your mobile users are getting the best experience of your site. Everything needs to not only be responsive but tailored to mobile views. When you add new content or create a new page, you need to start with the assumption that you’re designing for mobile viewers — this extends to matters such as page speed because a mobile can’t always rely on high-speed Wi-Fi. If your site won’t load snappily on a 2G network, it has a lot of room for improvement.

Try Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and PageSpeed Insights. They’ll flag up any major issues facing your site. After that, it’s up to you to find the best way to implement improvements or determine if your website in its current form is worth salvaging.

Depending on the problems, it may be quicker to start fresh with a new site (if you’re really pushed for time and don’t want any downtime, one option is looking at websites for sale and finding one you can rebrand, but keep in mind that it will limit your options).

Whatever you do, just be quick about it. The clock is ticking, and businesses that are too slow to adapt will soon enough find themselves struggling to keep up in an online world of ever-rising UX, speed and design standards.