Google just announced that within MONTHs they are going to divide their index between mobile and desktop – and the MOBILE index will be the primary index.
The announcment came in the keynote from Gary Illyes at Google (basically the new Matt Cutt’s) on Thursday at Pubcon Vegas 2016.
Good thing we were there at the event to catch the news!
He didn’t give a specific timeline but did follow up and say that the update will be coming within “months.”
They also said they will still have a desktop index, but the mobile index will be primary:
Google will still have a desktop index, it just won't be as fresh as the mobile index. #pubcon
— Lisa Barone (@LisaBarone) October 13, 2016
What The Google Index Split Means For You
This will be a major update that follows what we’ve been seeing in the last year with lots of Google’s focus going to mobile with mobilegeddon, the AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) project, and more.
So what should you do to prepare?
- First, check to make sure your website is mobile friendly with Google’s Mobile Friendly Testing tool
- Second, consider adding AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages to your site
- Third, sign up for the HOTH mailing list below this post so we can keep you up to date as more information becomes available!
We’re still collecting data on this and we’ll keep you up to date with everything we dig up.
Any questions? We’d love to hear them in the comments!
Cheers,
-The HOTH Crew
Wow!
As a web developer, this is great news.
Lot’s of sites will need upgraded and optimized. I’m that guy 🙂
Thanks for this valuable information and thanks for keeping us up to date. I think we all had an idea that this sort of thing will happen sooner or later. Sad to say though, I hate mobile. I am a desktop fan through and through. But what can I do? The world is moving on and we simply have to adapt to take a slice of the pie. Thanks to wordpress, it’s community and all the plugins and extra code out there, it won’t be to difficult to adapt.
Will be interesting to see how this effects search results. I don’t think it will be that much different…any predictions?
It will be different if your site isn’t optimized for mobile….