Google Begins Mobile-First Indexing Roll Out

Source: TechCrunch

After more than a year of testing, Google has announced that they are rolling out "mobile - first" indexing. The majority of Google visitors use the search engine from a mobile device and that has been the case since 2015. Google's "mobile - first" indexing will use the mobile version of a web page for ranking and indexing in order to better ensure that the majority of its users (mobile users) discover the content they are searching for. 

Google first boosted the rank of mobile-friendly web pages back in 2015 and mobile has only become increasing more of a priority for Google over the years. Google announced plans to introduce mobile indexing in 2016 and began to shift a small number of websites to mobile - first indexing late in 2017. Google has announced that mobile indexing will not affect how content is ranked directly but will rather allow these web sites to "perform better" on mobile searches. 

Google will begin mobile indexing a first wave of websites that are already following mobile indexing best practices and will notify these websites through the Search Console. 

Web site speed is another increasingly important factor for Google rankings that will also be adjusted this year - in addition to Google currently using page speed when determining page rankings, websites that load slowly will begin to be down-ranked in July 2018. 


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