A detailed discussion on Google mobile-first index

In the age of technology, majority is well acquainted with their mobiles or smartphones. Quite naturally, most of the searches on Google are made on the mobile devices though the ranking system is still depending on the desktop version. The acceptability of a content to its users is judged through the desktop version. This may create trouble for the content or page when searched by a mobile user as the Google algorithm doesn't assess the page when seen on the mobile device.

However, as mentioned previously, maximum numbers of searches are made on the mobile, Google wants its indexes to stand for its users. For this reason, Google started to experiment so that mobile-first indexing can be created, which would play an essential role in generating effective outcome. Well, the search index will remain a single index of applications and websites and on the other side, the Google algorithms will mainly utilize the mobile index to rank the content or pages from a particular website. Now, the users should be aware of the term mobile-first index.

What is the mobile-first index?

To be very clear and specific, Google has planned to create mobile-first index to control the content's ranking signals. According to Google, "We primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results."

They also add that the experimental process will keep on going and they hope that all these would be beneficial for their users. In fact, they don't forget to mention that this is just the beginning and to grab astounding user experience a few recommendations have been made by them for the webmasters.

How can a webmaster prepare better mobile-focused index?

There are a few ideas Google is providing the webmasters so that they can be prepared for the necessary changes. These are enlisted below:

• If the website is responsive where the main content is similar to that of the markup, no change is required.
• If the site configuration is there where the primary content and markup is not similar, certain changes need to be made.
• Site owners or webmasters should be confirmed to serve structured markup for both versions.
• They have to use robots.txt testing tool to verify the version's access to Googlebot.
• Sites do not need to change to their basic links; Google will proceed to use the links as models to give the befitting results to its users.
• If the site owner has only authenticated the desktop site in the Search Console, he must add and verify the mobile version of it.
• If the owner possesses desktop site only, Google will go on indexing that desktop site, even if the mobile user agent is utilized to go through that website.

Now, there may be an important question that can strike in the minds of the webmasters and this article is going to throw a light on it.

Will Google keep these two separate indexes?

This is a vital question asked by a lot many webmasters and to answer to that query Google has remarked that, "our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps." However, it is not completely clear as earlier, it was cited that two indexes would be there for this.

Well, if there is any doubt, webmasters can contact Webmaster forums directly to sort out every type of problem related to these changes.