Mobile-first indexing: what is it, and why has it taken so long?

Jonathon Roberts

Google has announced it has completed the rollout of mobile-first indexing for the entire web.

The search engine first introduced mobile-first indexing back in November 2016. After almost seven years of rolling out the ranking technique, it has finally been completed.

What is Google mobile-first indexing?

The initiative known as mobile-first indexing means that when Google crawls your website to discover new content, it will crawl the mobile version of your site instead of desktop. Therefore, it is important to make sure that you have the same content on both mobile and desktop to allow Google to crawl your site effectively.

If your website has different content compared to the mobile version of your site, Google will be able to detect this, potentially leading to a drop in the performance of your site.

Upon the completion of the project, Google’s John Mueller posted on a company blog:

“It’s been a long road, getting from there to here. We’re delighted to announce that the trek to Mobile First Indexing is now complete”.

Despite claiming in May that it was finished with switching websites to mobile-first indexing, Google has decided to make this announcement now. However, Google also announced in 2020 that the deadline for making the switch to mobile-first indexing was set for September of that year. Therefore, it is still unknown what’s taken Google so long, and why the final announcement has been made now.

What should you do if your website doesn’t work on mobile devices?

Since all websites will now be crawled by the mobile crawler, the ‘Indexing crawler information’ in the setting pages of Google Search Console will be turned off.

There are still some websites that do not work on mobile devices at all. If your website is one of these, it is absolutely essential to get your website rebuilt to be responsive for mobile devices so your site can stay up to date with the latest website specifications. Otherwise, this could cause you to lose a lot of traffic.

If you’ve got a website that doesn’t work on mobile devices, or you’re just looking to increase online traffic generally, get in touch with our web design experts at Engage Web today. We’d love to use our web design and search engine optimisation (SEO) services to aid your business.

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Jonathon Roberts

Jonathon lives and breathes marketing, boasting a degree in Business Management and Marketing Management and a diverse list of experiences both professional and voluntary. Having grown up in the thick of the digital and social media age, he has been quick to dive into online marketing and search engine optimisation in his career and spare time, spanning such fields as academics, local business and sport.

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