Mobile-First Indexing Officially Arrives

Pete Prestipino
by Pete Prestipino 16 Jan, 2023
Mobile-First Indexing Officially Arrives

If your website isn't mobile friendly right now, the SEO future is about to get pretty bleak.

Google has officially started the process of rolling out "mobile-first indexing" but, of course, only for those websites that adhere to the best practices. 
 
 In the past, Google's crawling, indexing, and ranking systems used the desktop version of a page's content, but mobile-first indexing now means that the mobile version of a page will be used instead. 

Google indicated that it is notifying those websites being migrated to mobile-first indexing through the Search Console interface and clearly noted that being indexed this way provides no ranking advantage. 

Site owners will likely see significantly increased crawl rate from the "Smartphone" Googlebot as a result of the change. Additionally, Google will show the mobile version of pages not just in Search results but also within Google cached pages.
 
Pete Prestipino
Pete Prestipino
Digital marketing executive with proven experience in all aspects of search engine optimization (SEO), performance-based advertising, consumer-generated/social media, email marketing, lead generation, Web design, usability, and analytics. - 20-year Internet marketing veteran, currently serving as the Digital Marketing Campaign Manager at Antenna Group (formerly Chicago Digital). - Former Editor-In-Chief of Website Magazine, and a regular speaker on Web technology digital marketing strategy - Author of several books on digital marketing Including Web 360: The Fundamentals of Web Success; Affiliate 360: The Fundamentals of Performance Marketing; Domains 360: The Fundamentals of Buying & Selling Domain Names, and SEO 360: The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization.