Google will favor the mobile version of all sites
Google is testing a new way of defining website positioning. In 4 to 6 months, the mobile version of the sites will be analyzed as a priority, and no longer the content of the sites for computers.
Google will soon only take into account in its index the content of the mobile version of a site, even if it is poorer than the desktop version. Baptized mobile-first, this new index, still in test, could be launched within a few months. A logical development because Internet users are increasingly consulting the Internet on their smartphones or tablets. Consequences announced on the SEO : mobile sites that are too poor will be downgraded in the google search results, as well as their computer version.
In this section:
What is Mobile-first?
In recent months, Google has kept encouraging developers to think mobile. Since last year, the engine has already favored sites suitable for mobile viewing when searching on mobile. He takes one more step with his new Mobile-first index. Sites that display content that is too stripped down on their mobile site compared to the desktop site will rank less well in the future. This is what the Mountain View firm said on November 4 on its official blog.
The reasoning seems logical because since last month, the mobile and the tablet represent 51,3% of Internet use in the world, against 48,7% for the computer (StatCounter Global Stats study).
How it works ?
In practice, Google will perform one indexing for the mobile version and another for the desktop version. Main novelty: it is now the content of the mobile version that will be privileged, and no longer the desktop version. This will force site editors not to strip too much of the smartphone version of their site. Because it is this content that will be taken into account for the site referencing, regardless of the medium used by the person for the research (mobile or desktop). Note that Google classifies tablets in the same category as desktops.
Google indexing robots could even stop crawling the desktop versions at all: "Our algorithms will end up using first the content of the mobile version of a site to rate its pages, understand its structure and to display the enriched snippets in our results" Product manager Doantam Phan warned on the official Google blog.
What consequences on SEO?
Sites that do not have a mobile version could be downgraded in search results by Google, or even penalized in the future. But the Mobile-first index being still in the test state, all the details on the referencing of the desktop-only sites are not yet known. The deployment of this new index is still in the testing state. Its implementation should not be done for several months.
In summary, site editors must now take care of the mobile version of their site before they go live. If this version is too poor or non-functional, the consequences will be significant in terms of SEO.
