We Witnessed ‘Mobilegeddon’ of 2015, Now it’s Google’s Mobile-First Index

How much your website is aligned with Google’s mobile-first index?

Remember Google’s April 21, 2015, search engine algorithm upgrade  a.k.a “Mobilegeddon.” Chuck Price first coined the name in a March 9, 2015, blog article for Search Engine Watch. Webmasters and web developers later adopted the term.  With the update(Mobilegeddon) Google put the mobile-friendliness of a webpage as a major factor for deciding the ranking in search results. Some of you might have the recollection of Google telling websites to be ‘Mobile-Friendly’.

So why it went to be one of the most discussed updates on SEO during its time, why it was called  “unprecedented” by many industry professionals?

Update triggered major disruptions in the web space. It put organic results over paid results. Some small businesses felt the curb in revenues they receive from advertising their websites. Some lost their usual traffic. But this monumental update was priorly notified.  On contrary, some experts commented it was a ‘usual one’ like the rest of the updates.

Google was (and is) prioritizing websites to look equally good on mobile devices too. They have foreseen – the ubiquitousness mobile devices are going to achieve in every facade of people’s lives and that everyone will visit websites via their smartphones more often than a PC or Laptop, and that it could also become a standard.

Google’s prediction never went in vain,  now mobile devices are in their prime. Though its major function is to communicate with our fellow humans, we mainly use our smartphones for everything else, from shopping to consulting our doc for a session.  

It was in 2017 Mobile-First Indexing rolled out. In 2018 they told us to be ready. But not all the websites were able to ready up with mobile indexing. Google decided to ditch the deadline, and left it open for “the last steps of mobile-first indexing”.

You should know, that if your website or your company’s website is made online after July 1, 2019, it is by default mobile-first indexing enabled. In simple terms, your webpage experience needs to be the same on Desktop as well as on mobile devices.
It’s the “Page Experience” that matter. Check out Mobile-first Indexing Practices by Google or if you want an expert hand to make your web page more cohesive with mobile-first indexing – come to us.