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What Is Mobile First Indexing?
Taylor Tunnison • February 24, 2022

The internet is home to more than one billion websites. About 200 million of these are active, which means users visit often and developers update them regularly. Search engines like Google make sifting through this vast number of websites both possible and user-friendly. They do this by “crawling” the sites’ publicly available content with special computer software. Web crawlers catalogue the subject matter of websites page-by-page and add it to a massive reference index. That way, users can search for topics and key terms without needing to know where the data is located. Google recently announced its decision to shift to mobile-first indexing. Here’s a brief overview of what this means for your website.

Mobile-First Indexing

Desktop websites were once the only versions available to users. In the past, Google used this data to build its large index of content. Now, mobile versions of websites are common, whether in the form of responsive, dynamic, or standalone designs. Mobile devices have certain constraints like small screen sizes that often clash with desktop websites. You’ve probably seen this firsthand if you’ve ever visited a website that wasn’t optimized for mobile. Its pages may have loaded slowly, displayed incorrectly, or could've been hard to read without zooming in closely.

Google's changes aim to avoid the issues caused by desktop indexing. For example, some desktop versions of websites contain more information than their mobile counterparts. This may mislead mobile users who expect an exact search result. They might land on a page only to realize it isn't quite what they were told it was. Mobile-first indexing bridges this major gap between device and content. It prioritizes the mobile version of a website when crawling and indexing its data for search engines. That way, mobile users get exactly what they expect from their search results.

Why Mobile-First Indexing Matters

Mobile devices are now more popular than ever. In fact, over 50% of global website traffic comes from them. This trend has been picking up steam over the last decade and shows no signs of slowing. Some emerging digital markets like those in India and Africa even skipped the desktop phase entirely. This may be due to financial and infrastructure constraints, or simple inconvenience. Regardless, Google certainly understands this trend and aims to provide an excellent experience for all its users.

 

It's estimated that over 90% of active users worldwide prefer to access the internet on mobile devices. This may not come as much of a surprise, especially among younger crowds. Also, most online experiences begin with a search engine. These two facts plainly highlight the importance of mobile-first indexing. Given that so many users access the internet via smartphones and search engines, their experience should be a top priority.

Mobile-First Indexing Tips

So, what does this mean for your business? Google now enables mobile-first indexing by default for all new websites. If your current website is desktop only, you shouldn’t have to change anything. However, we recommend shifting to a responsive or dynamic design to make sure it's user-friendly for mobile users, too. Google also suggests some key best practices, and here are a few worth mentioning.


  • Use supported image formats like PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, WebP, and SVG.
  • Use supported video formats like MP4, MKV, MOV, WMV, and MPEG.
  • Keep the same headlines from your desktop site on your mobile site.
  • Organize relevant content into tabs, dropdowns, or accordion menus.
  • Include most, if not all, of the same primary content on both versions.
  • Refrain from excessive popups, widgets, elements, and lazy-loaded content on mobile.
  • Set the same headers, captions, page titles, URLs, and meta descriptions on both versions.


This is a good start, but it barely scratches the surface of mobile website optimization. One of the main benefits of hiring a web developer is that they handle these complex details for you. We design all our websites with mobile devices in mind, even if clients aren’t interested in ongoing SEO services. This sets a business up for success both now and in the future. It also guarantees that all website visitors have a great experience, no matter what device or browser they choose to use. If your website needs a tune-up, or you have questions about mobile-first indexing, we hope you’ll reach out today. We’ve helped dozens of small businesses with their online presence, and we can help you, too.

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