Mobile First Timeline - When Will Google Move The Remainder of Websites?
-
A common question from anxious webmasters who have separate/smaller mobile websites is: _"Will Google move my site over to mobile-first, even though I'm not "ready" yet?" _It's not an easy question to answer. Here's what we know so far:
-
Google is currently already migrating websites over that have a strong correlation between mobile and desktop content
-
Google is taking the migration process very slowly, and for now, is not migrating sites over that are not "ready".
-
Google has not announced any firm timeline for when they plan to migrate the remainder of all websites.
In answering this question, I typically mention all of the above to help allay any fears. I then state that it could maybe be anywhere from one year to several years before the process is over - but with a huge disclaimer that this is pure speculation, and that only Google knows for sure. Lastly, I reiterate that Google in the meantime is strongly encouraging webmasters w mobile sites to ensure that they match the desktop version (URLs, schema, video, metadata, etc). So the choice is to either to upgrade to responsive/adaptive, or upgrade the mobile site. This is where the future is going.
STILL - any additional feedback / thoughts / ideas / tips on this are welcome, because I continue to struggle with answering this question for clients. Thanks!
-
-
So glad if it's useful!
-
Wonderful points and advice, thank you Bridget!
-
Great question! I love also that you're thinking about how to give support to your clients beyond just answering their literal question -- you're absolutely right that a lot of people are just feeling a bit of anxiety around being "not ready".
My typical response would be very similar to the points you've outlined, and I typically try to offer reassurance that this change isn't necessarily as drastic as it sounds as long as you already have a functional mobile-friendly version of your website. I suspect that part of the question comes from the issue of what Google views as "ready" to migrate versus what the webmaster might feel they need to do before they feel "ready". But as long as your mobile version is performing well and you have all the content accessible and user friendly, I don't think there's a lot to worry about.
I wrote a post for the Moz blog earlier this year to answer some of the FAQs people have about the shift to mobile-first indexing, you might find it helpful either for your own answer to this question or as a resource to share with people who ask you about it: https://moz.com/blog/mobile-first-indexing-seo
-
Agreed, one single URL is the ideal. This question is more geared towards webmasters who still have separate (smaller) mobile sites, and are more wondering how long they can get away with it.
-
I'd say the ideal is hide nothing and make all your content load from the same urls. Don't modify the content aside what is done automatically with a responsive framework like Bootstrap or Materialize.
If your clients are using shared hosting and struggle with load times both of those frameworks have options to only implement the absolute minimum for the features the customer wants, and for the extreme minimalist "Fluidity" is a mere 115 bytes.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Indexing Stopped
Hello Team, A month ago, Google was indexing more than 2,35,000 pages, now has reduced to 11K. I have cross-checked almost everything including content, backlinks and schemas. Everything is looking fine, except the server response time, being a heavy website, or may be due to server issues, the website has an average loading time of 4 secs. Also, I would like to mention that I have been using same server since I have started working on the website, and as said above a month ago the indexing rate was more than 2.3 M, now reduced to 11K. nothing changed. As I have tried my level best on doing research for the same, so please if you had any such experiences, do share your valuable solutions to this problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeffreyjohnson0 -
If my website do not have a robot.txt file, does it hurt my website ranking?
After a site audit, I find out that my website don't have a robot.txt. Does it hurt my website rankings? One more thing, when I type mywebsite.com/robot.txt, it automatically redirect to the homepage. Please help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | binhlai0 -
Has anyone ever seen Google truncating the beginning of a meta description on a mobile device?
I could not find any articles or mentions of this online, and I am wondering if it has to do with the website being an "m-dot" website and not responsive. Any thoughts would be appreciated! IaZJWB2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
How to leverage Google Images?
My Google search rankings are improving rapidly at the moment, but a lot of my rankings are for images (presume that means the images are appearing near the top in Google Images). How do I capitalise on that? It's not really much help to me that my images are popular unless it results in traffic to the pages where those images are used. I am running Wordpress so I have the option to have images embed as "no link", "link to attachment page", "link to original image", etc. Is there any advantage of using one of these over the other? I'd really like to set it up so that when a Google Images user clicks "View Image" it loads the attachment page or the host content page rather than the image. Bad SEO? I'm not sure if the fact that I'm using Jetpack Photon CDN image hosting will make this more complicated or not. Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
My website is not indexing
Hello Experts As i search site :http://www.louisvuittonhandbagss.com or just entering http://www.louisvuittonhandbagss.com on Google i am not getting my website . I have done following steps 1. I have submitted sitemaps and indexed all the site maps 2.i have used GWT feature fetch as Google . 3. I have submitted my website to top social book marking websites and to some classified sites also . Pleae
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aschauhan5210 -
Seo App on Mobile
Hi all i am learning seo mobile app on google play and itune , I'm finding some tips or experience to seo there. Please tell me some advise .Thanks all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Anhlebksp0 -
Construction website
Hi, I have a construction website that is aimed at tradesmen. There are 2 goals of the site: 1. To allow potential customers to sign up for a trade account. 2. To allow existing customers to access to products and login to their account to make an order. The site is full of categories and products which should be indexed so we rank for these trade products. The homepage redesign is where i am having an issue: Currently the site is set up like a standard retail site but without prices, which are viewable only when logged in. The homepage is designed such that there is several call to actions about promotions, services and to apply for a trade account, that apply to both existing and potential customers. At the moment there is a poor conversion to get potential customers to apply for a trade account. This is because there is too much distraction away from this goal and they are allowed to engage other areas of the site freely. The main purpose of the homepage should be to encourage potential customers to sign up. The secondary purpose to for existing customers to access the accounts and products. I believe potential customers should not be exposed to the categories and products as it is a distraction from the primary goal. Potential customers, i.e. Tradesmen, would already have a certain understanding of the types of products we provide, so I don't feel it is necessary to allow them to crawl the rest of the site unless they have an account. What are your thoughts on that? Here is my lack of understanding: On the homepage, if I restrict access to categories and products to existing account holders only, where a login is required to proceed, would that mean Google cannot access these pages to index them? Or is this only controlled by NoFollows & Robots.txt? Obviously not indexing is undesirable. I do understand potential customers will need some information about our range of products but the idea is to coerce them to sign up for an account so they can see this information. The more information that is provided to a potential customer, the higher the probability a person can make a decision against applying for an account. Restricting access creates a motivator to reveal information and we capture their data to converse with them personally. This increases the probability of us being able to retain their interest by providing a customised service based on their needs. All of this I feel makes perfect sense to me, the only query/obstacle I have is the indexing of the site. If Google cannot index pages that are restricted by account access, then I would like suggestions to solve/compromise/optimise the above. Just to address the desired behaviour of index pages. If in search a our product page appears, the person clicking the link would either be redirected or exposed to a login or sign up screen to view. Thank you so much for your help. Antonio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AVSFencingSupplies0 -
Why is my XML sitemap ranking on the first page of google for 100s of key words versus the actual relevant page?
I still need this question answerd and I know it's something I must have changed. But google is ranking my sitemap for 100s of key terms versus the actual page. It's great to be on the first page but not my site map...... Geeeez.....
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ursalesguru0