Since October 13, when Google’s John Mueller announced at Pubcon that Google will be shifting its search index’s priority to mobile excitement has been brewing to see exactly what this will entail. With Google’s 4 November post on the Google Webmasters blog announcing that Google had started experimenting with the mobile index on a small scale, we gained some more insight into what the dominate search engine has in store for the future.
As stated in the Google Webmasters blog, Google cites, “We understand this is an important shift in our indexing and it’s one we take seriously. We’ll continue to carefully experiment over the coming months on a small scale and we’ll ramp up this change when we’re confident that we have a great user experience.”
Of note, ClickThrough-Marketing.com notes, Google again confirmed that it continue to support desktop-only search indexing – for site owners who don’t have mobile sites. And while we know the shift change is happening gradually and only on a small scale, Google still is yet to provide any detailed information on the matter, meaning how many people the update currently affects is uncertain.
What we do know now is that Google has given webmasters and SEOs a list of recommendations to complete before the mobile index takes full effect. It’s also safe to assume that responsive design and dynamic serving mobile sites verified with Google whose primary content and markup are the same for both platforms, do not require any changes to be made at this time.
This will likely be a case where more information comes out as Google begins to roll out the new indexing, but until then marketers will do best to follow Google updates and continue to make mobile a priority in any current or upcoming site design.
