Google’s Mobile First Indexing

Google officially started July 1, 2019, it’s most awaited updates “Mobile First Indexing”. Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Previously, before launching this algorithm Google used the desktop version of a page's content when evaluating the relevance of a page to a user's query whether on mobile or desktop searches. It's important to note that there isn't a separate mobile-first index; Google Search continues to use only one index. Google Search continues to show the URL that is the most appropriate to users (whether it's a desktop or mobile).

To be clear, only brand new sites Google is not yet aware of, will be indexed using mobile-first indexing by default. Other sites that have already moved over to mobile-first indexing will also continue to be indexed using mobile-first indexing. But older sites which is not yet migrated will continue to be indexed the old-fashion way, desktop-first indexing, until those sites are ready. Google said “For older websites, we’ll continue monitoring and evaluating pages for their readiness for mobile-first indexing, and will notify them through Search Console once they’re seen as being ready”.

In simple words mobile first indexing means that when a new website is registered it will be crawled by Google’s smartphone Googlebot, and its mobile-friendly content will be used to index its pages, as well as to understand the site’s structured data and to show snippets from the site in Google’s search results, when relevant.

Search engine optimizer should not confuse this mobile-first indexing with “Mobilegeddon” algorithm or Mobile Friendly updates of Google in 2014. Mobilegeddon algorithm was beneficial to mobile-friendly websites & pages into mobile search only while mobile-first indexing is beneficial in both mobile and as well as in desktop searches. Latter one is related to the indexing of mobile-friendly content the same for both mobile & desktop searches.