Mobile first index analysis

Google’s talk about switching their index to cater to mobile first Index (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/03/rolling-out-mobile-first-indexing.html ) and foremost raises many important questions. I’m going to try go go about the reasoning for these changes and why there needs to be extreme caution on their part

Mobile is King or so they say.

Based on multiple studies, the amount of mobitle traffic they receive varies from 50% to 90%. This varies greatly by industry and by country. 

The value of mobile is also different from desktop, just take for example the adwords interface in mobile compared to desktop. They have come a very long way for the mobile interface, there is however not the same ease as having an desktop dual screen setup were you can cross reference large amounts of data.

Google makes a few statements:

• Mobile-indexing is rolling out more broadly. Being indexed this way has no ranking advantage and operates independently from our mobile-friendly assessment.

This statement is confusing as if it has no ranking impact why do it at all? it can also be interpreted as it can only be negative to rankings as you will only have less content index on mobile compared to pc.

• Having mobile-friendly content is still helpful for those looking at ways to perform better in mobile search results.

Having a mobile friendly site will help just by virtue of having better user metrics.

• Having fast-loading content is still helpful for those looking at ways to perform better for mobile and desktop users.

This again is something that secondary metrics such as bounce rates will be directly affected by so very slow sites are already indirectly penalized because of it.

• As always, ranking uses many factors. We may show content to users that’s not mobile-friendly or that is slow loading if our many other signals determine it is the most relevant content to show.

This is the most important part, they do not want to sacrifice relevancy to the benefit of a nicer design. This would mean that they do not want to have an mobile first page show up first just because it fit better on your phone, an old page from last century should outrank it if its more relevant (in theories at least).

So far what I have seen are sites that either are redirection, canonical to another domain, desktop only or have low traffic volume. I have yet to see any large scale site go to mobile first or anyone else talking about any significant changes in traffic that can be attributed to it.

Time will tell how this will play out. It have been announced for over 2 years and could take a few more years to be fully deployed.