Mobile Phones are critical in today’s world. Having a mobile friendly website can’t be a reconsideration. They are becoming the cornerstone of content utilization and buying. Mobile searches encourage purchase decisions and increases buying intent.
What is Mobile-First-Indexing (MFI)?
“Mobile-first indexing” means Google will consider the mobile version of any new website for evaluating, indexing and ranking the site, instead of the desktop version which was used predominantly. 1st July 2019 onwards, all new websites by default would be analysed and ranked on Search on the basis of “mobile-first indexing”. For older and existing websites, Google would determine their readiness for “mobile-first indexing” based on the quality of content including text, images, videos, links and structured data as well as other meta-data, titles and descriptions. Google will intimate them through Search Console once they see your mobile site being ready.
The mobile-first indexing initiative has come a long way. Let’s see it’s gradual process:
2016 – Google first announced this idea
December 2017 – Google initiated mobile-first indexing for a small handful of sites.
March 2018 – Mobile-indexing began to roll out on a broader scale.
Year end 2018 – Half the pages on the web were indexed by Google’s smartphone Googlebot.
1st July 2019 (The official announcement) – All new websites by default would be analysed and ranked on the basis of “mobile-first indexing”.
Why did Google do this?
Google’s entire business and foundation is built on a simple principle to give the user information as fast and accurate as possible. A study says mobile users spend two times more minutes online than desktop users and Google can’t continue indexing desktop sites first, when the majority of their traffic is on mobile. Google still wants to deliver content fast and effectively, this time Mobile First.
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