If you have managed a website in recent years that offered a desktop version for users browsing via computer and a different version for users accessing via mobile devices, you might be interested to know that Google’s crawlers, the technological components responsible for indexing your site, have only scanned and indexed the mobile version of the site. Sounds strange? Want to understand the principle behind this working method of Google? Keep reading.
What is the rationale behind Mobile First Indexing?
The term Mobile First Indexing refers to Google’s scanning method, which gradually, over the years, has shifted to a working method where it scans and indexes the mobile versions of a given site’s pages, rather than their desktop versions. Initially, Google only scanned the desktop versions of various sites, and then gradually expanded its scanning method to cover mobile versions. Today, Google only scans the mobile versions of sites, especially if they are new sites.
What is the logic behind this scanning method of Google? Well, in recent years, more and more people are deciding to change the way they consume content online, moving to more extensive use of various smart devices, such as mobile phones. The convenience, ease of use, and the fact that the mobile device is near people most hours of the day—all these indicate that gradually, the experience offered to users accessing a site via smart mobile devices is more important and critical to the user than that offered through desktop versions.
Therefore, when Google chooses to index mobile versions, it signals that it is important for sites to offer a good user experience for mobile devices as well. Such an experience includes many diverse aspects, from the loading speed of different pages, through the full functionality that must be maintained in these versions, to the content, which must be complete, comprehensive, and up-to-date, even when users consume it via mobile devices.
So, are there two parallel indexes?
Is the indexing method in the mobile world conducted alongside that of desktop versions? The answer is negative. Google, as far as can be understood from its various publications, does not maintain two separate indexes. Its transition to the mobile version indexing method leads it to maintain an index of mobile version copies of websites worldwide.
What does this mean in practice? Mainly that it’s important to create complete mobile versions that contain all the important data that needs to be indexed in the search engine, which are fast, easy to understand and use, and generally provide a good experience for both users and the search engine crawlers. These mobile versions need to be readable, accessible to crawlers, and allow easy navigation between different pages.
The transition from desktop version indexing to mobile version indexing
If Google had announced one day its transition to indexing through scanning mobile versions of sites, there would certainly have been an outcry in the world. Many old and large sites would likely be affected by such an update, as they offered users thin, not always particularly friendly versions, which provided a mediocre user experience and did not always contain all the content available on the site.
This is why Google began deploying the mobile version indexing method in a gradual, slow, and controlled manner, and even took care to postpone additional updates to its ranking algorithm several times.
At the end of 2017, Google officially announced that it would begin a gradual update of the new indexing method on various websites worldwide.
In March 2018, Google announced that it was expanding the update rollout to more sites worldwide, and the owners of these sites should be prepared and ready accordingly.
In 2020, Google announced that most of its sites had transitioned to being indexed using the Mobile First Indexing method.
Towards September 2020, Google announced that it was postponing the implementation of the algorithm change comprehensively to March 2021.
Eventually, Google postponed the mentioned update again to November 2021, indicating quite a few challenges it experienced with the impact of this update on search results.
In this context, it’s important to note something: Google wants to offer users who come to it the most relevant results for their search query and search intent. If a parameter, logical as it may be, that Google introduces into its ranking algorithm, causes a loss of consumer trust, it is entirely a problem for Google. This is why such updates are examined slowly and carefully.
Indexing the Mobile Version of New Websites by Default
As mentioned, the multiple delays made by Google do not apply to new websites, where the default indexing method is Mobile First Indexing. This means anyone involved in an SEO project must carefully plan the mobile version of the site to provide a quality, complete, and comprehensive response to the search intent of users, even when they access the site via smart mobile devices.
What is the Connection Between the Mobile User Experience and Indexing the Mobile Version of a Site?
Anyone who has looked into Google’s console in recent months, the main tool for website owners in their communication with Google, could see a new tab and many data points related to the user experience world. Alongside the loading speed of the site’s pages, Google has implemented references to three new metrics: the loading time of the largest object on the page, the time interval from the moment the relevant page loads until user interaction with the page is possible, and a metric that refers to how smoothly the page loads on the client’s device.
To encourage website owners to improve these metrics, Google introduced three quality levels for these parameters: good, medium, and poor. The steps that website owners need to take to improve these metrics are, in many cases, also those that allow for better indexing of the mobile version of the site.
For example, removing parts of the site that load only after a user action at the end, to improve the FID interactivity metric, helps index the relevant page, as Google’s bot cannot index parts of the site that load only after user interaction with the page.
Improvements related to the loading duration of the largest object on the user’s screen, which is the LCP metric, help the site be more accessible to search engine crawlers and allow for faster indexing. Since Google’s crawlers operate in a way that seeks not to interfere with the browsing experience on the site, they depend on the level of interaction of the site’s pages and the loading times of the different pages. Therefore, removing particularly large objects that are not really necessary for the user’s browsing experience can certainly contribute to the indexing of mobile pages.
In Conclusion
The growing trend of consumers using mobile devices to obtain information and perform actions on websites definitely challenges Google. Google understands that the mobile versions of various sites are becoming more critical, and consumers’ reliance on them is increasing. This is why Google places importance on the completeness of the information available in the mobile versions of the site and the user experience they offer to visitors.
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