The mobile device has not a mere appliance to communicate over the phone, it has given us the immense freedom of time and place to access and reach the desired website. Due to this flexibility, more and more people are browsing the internet on their mobile phones. As a result, mobile users have already overpowered web users. This global phenomenon has impacted so deep that even Google is targeting the mobile-first indexing. And that’s why; the search engine giant has announced that the end of the year, they will completely transform the indexing process mobile-first by September 2020. All the sites will come under the crawling for mobile in the first place.

According to Google; “To simplify, we’ll be switching to mobile-first indexing for all websites starting September 2020.” Many sites have already moved over. If you want to know whether your site is on the list, you have to check it from the Google Search Console. As per the latest report, 70% of websites have already moved over. The search engine giant itself informed, “From our analysis, most sites shown in search results are good to go for mobile-first indexing, and 70% of those shown in our search results have already shifted over.”

What is mobile-first indexing?

In 2016, Google first introduced the mobile-first indexing. As the name reveals, the indexing of any site starts from its mobile version. Due to that reason, a sudden increase in crawl boat traffic from Smartphone is experienced by many website owners. Another important feature is that you may find the cache version is the mobile version most of the time.

If you don’t have the mobile version of the website, let us assure you that it is mobile-first indexing; not mobile-only indexing. That means that you don’t need to freak out if you have only the web version. Your website will be indexed too but it may take a longer time. It may affect the ranking of the site negatively. On the other hand, the sites that are backed with quality design for mobile may find a boost in their ranking.

Take note. If your site was not moved over yet, you may have already gotten a notice from Google with more information. Here is an example with a screenshot of a notice:

What you should do?

As we said before, Google started this mobile-first indexing process back in 2016 and it gave you 4 years to prepare your website for it. If you don’t have a mobile-friendly site, then you have time to build one on an immediate basis.

Check the mobile-friendly feature of the website from the Smartphone. You can depend on different tools available online to check the factor. Although Google will index the web version as well it will eventually affect the ranking of the website.

Google is working to provide a better user experience. The development team continuously researches how to improve the usability of the technology to provide a more seamless service. Just like they are working on voice search, the mobile first-indexing is another way they can serve the users better. So, upgrade your website as soon as possible so that your ranking will not be harmed.