As Google begins rolling out mobile-first indexing to more and more sites, the search giant is seeing some confusion within the industry around mobile-first indexing and has decided to clarify some points on Twitter this morning.
URLs with mobile-first indexing
If you deploy different URLs for mobile versus desktop, Google will show the mobile searchers your mobile URL and the desktop searchers your desktop URL. In both cases, the indexed content will be the mobile version of the site, even if Google shows the desktop URL. Sites that are designed with a single URL for mobile and desktop do not need to worry about this.
Crawling changes
Google said the crawl count per day won’t really change, but the balance will shift from desktop pages crawled to mostly mobile pages crawled. Google also may temporarily increase crawling when it reindexes your website.
Cache bug
There is currently a bug with the Google cache that when a site is moved over to the mobile-indexing process, the Google cache link sometimes may not return anything and may 404 or show a blank page. This is a known bug that Google is working on fixing and has zero impact on indexing and ranking.
Speed update is unrelated to mobile-first indexing
The speed update that is coming up in July is unrelated to mobile-first indexing. Yes, you should make your site fast, especially for mobile users, Google says, but the speed update is not directly related to mobile-first indexing.
Mobile user interface concessions
Mobile websites that use accordions or hamburger menus or similar methods to make content less overwhelming in the smartphone user interface are perfectly fine.
Mobile-friendliness is not required
Your website does not need to be mobile-friendly or responsive to be included in the mobile-first indexing process. In fact, the first sites to move to mobile-first indexing were desktop-only websites.
Ranking boost?
Being switched to mobile-first indexing does not give you a better ranking in Google search. While being mobile-friendly is a ranking factor on mobile, it is unrelated to being in the mobile-first index.
More documentation
For more details and documentation on mobile-first indexing and mobile sites, check out the tweet below:
