Responsive web design — get ready for Google's mobile-first indexing

How your web site gets ranked in Google is increasingly being determined by how the content and other ranking factors on the mobile version of your web site. Eventually, as has been announced by Google, a web site’s mobile version will get the priority in its indexing and page rankings.

Said Google in November 2016, …

Google says they are in the process of implementing this change and have been testing it.

If you have a responsive web site, you shouldn’t have to change anything.

If you only have a desktop site, then Google will still continue to index it, but we expect it’s the mobile-friendly sites that will get higher rankings, as we have already seen in the past year.

Gary Illyes, a Google webmaster trends analyst, said recently that Google probably won’t launch its mobile-first indexing algorithm until sometime in 2018. (More details here)

He also said that Google wants to deploy the mobile-first index in a way that doesn’t hurt non-mobile-friendly sites, which means a complete launch of mobile-first indexing may take even longer.

Gary said that Google’s eventual switch to a mobile-first index doesn’t mean that desktop content will stop ranking, it just means that Google will look for mobile-friendly content first.

What you can do to get your web site ready for mobile-first indexing

If you still have a desktop only web site or a desktop site and a mobile site, then the easiest solution is to build a responsive website — one whose size and layout automatically adjusts to the device being used by the viewer, whether this be a desktop computer, a tablet, or a phone.

Contact Fusion Creations Inc. in Calgary to ensure your web site's design will be ready for the upcoming changes in Google's search algorithm.