Google's mobile-first indexing is finally rolling out: Here's what you need to know

It’s here. After more than a year of waiting, the search giant this week announced that it is rolling out mobile-first indexing . Here’s what you need to know about the new functionality. Mobile-first indexing is… First things first. What is mobile indexing? As the name suggests, mobile-first indexing is an indexing system under which Google will “predominantly” look at a mobile version of a site’s content for indexing and ranking. The rationale for this is simple: most Google users now access the search engine through a smartphone so, where appropriate, Google should prioritize the content that mobile users see when it crawls sites. Google will still have one index It’s important to note that Google has not created a separate index for the content it crawls using mobile-first indexing. The company will continue to maintain a single index. Mobile-first indexing is merely a change to the way Google adds content to that index. A lot of sites won’t be affected Mobile-first indexing is an important development, but many sites won’t be affected by it. Most notably, sites that use a responsive design won’t be subject to mobile-first indexing because their content is the same on desktop and mobile. Also not impacted: sites that only have a desktop version and canonical AMP pages. The sites that will be affected by mobile-first indexing are those that use separate URLs for desktop and mobile users, and those that serve content dynamically based on device type. Those affected will want to heed […]

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