This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Neighbor News

Google Changes Algorithm - more focus on mobile

Andrew Raynor Google again changes their focus, business websites should be mobile friendly first

Andrew Raynor - Google to split indexing between desktop and mobile, what it means for your business!

Google just announced that within a few months they are going to split their index between mobile and desktop – and interestingly the mobile index will become the primary index.


According to Andrew Raynor, The announcement came in the keynote from Gary Illyes who replaced Matt Cutts as the index guru at Google. Mr. Illyes didn’t give a specific timeline but did follow up and say that the update will be coming within “months.”

Find out what's happening in Salemfor free with the latest updates from Patch.

They also said they will still have a desktop index, but the mobile index will be primary:

What The Google Index Split Means For Your Small Business

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?

Find out what's happening in Salemfor free with the latest updates from Patch.

  1. First, check to make sure your website is mobile friendly with Google’s Mobile Friendly Testing tool
  2. .
  3. Second, consider adding AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to your site
  4. .
  5. Contact a SEO expert to help devise a plan of attack

Google likes to keep organic SEO companies on their toes so that paying customers can enjoy premium ad space without the constant updates to their index. It makes sense from Google's perspective since they are a for-profit company after all.

Tweets from the industry shed more light on the subject:

###a class="TweetAuthor-link Identity u-linkBlend" data-scribe="element:user_link" href="https://twitter.com/LisaBarone" aria-label="Lisa Barone (screen name: LisaBarone)"###Lisa Barone ✔@LisaBarone###/a### .@methode: Google creating a sep mobile index, which will be it’s primary index. Desktop will be a secondary index,less up to date #Pubcon 12:41 PM - 13 Oct 2016
###a class="FollowButton follow-button profile" data-scribe="component:followbutton" href="https://twitter.com/jenstar" role="button" title="Follow Jennifer Slegg on Twitter"### Follow###/a### Jennifer Slegg @jenstar Mobile first index will change things since mobile sites tend to not be as large as desktop. @methode #pubcon 12:41 PM - 13 Oct 2016
###a class="FollowButton follow-button profile" data-scribe="component:followbutton" href="https://twitter.com/rawseo" role="button" title="Follow Eugene Feygin on Twitter"### Follow###/a### Eugene Feygin @rawseo Mobile index will be primary & desktop secondary-think about what are the main differences between your mobile & desktop #pubcon @methode pic.twitter.com/umwBoYA6Cx 12:43 PM - 13 Oct 2016
###a class="FollowButton follow-button profile" data-scribe="component:followbutton" href="https://twitter.com/LisaBarone" role="button" title="Follow Lisa Barone on Twitter"### Follow###/a### ###a class="TweetAuthor-link Identity u-linkBlend" data-scribe="element:user_link" href="https://twitter.com/LisaBarone" aria-label="Lisa Barone (screen name: LisaBarone)"###Lisa Barone ✔@LisaBarone###/a### Google will still have a desktop index, it just won't be as fresh as the mobile index. #pubcon 12:48 PM - 13 Oct 2016
###a class="FollowButton follow-button profile" data-scribe="component:followbutton" href="https://twitter.com/jenstar" role="button" title="Follow Jennifer Slegg on Twitter"### Follow###/a### Jennifer Slegg @jenstar Sites often remove content and structured data from mobile pages for size. @methode #pubcon 12:43 PM - 13 Oct 2016
###a class="FollowButton follow-button profile" data-scribe="component:followbutton" href="https://twitter.com/jenstar" role="button" title="Follow Jennifer Slegg on Twitter"### Follow###/a### Jennifer Slegg @jenstar If the content on your mobile page is the same as desktop, those sites will be fine. @methode #pubcon 12:42 PM - 13 Oct 2016
###a class="FollowButton follow-button profile" data-scribe="component:followbutton" href="https://twitter.com/LisaBarone" role="button" title="Follow Lisa Barone on Twitter"### Follow###/a### ###a class="TweetAuthor-link Identity u-linkBlend" data-scribe="element:user_link" href="https://twitter.com/LisaBarone" aria-label="Lisa Barone (screen name: LisaBarone)"###Lisa Barone ✔@LisaBarone###/a### Links will be scarcer on mobile. There will be loss of tokens (words). People put less content on mobile devices. #pubcon 12:42 PM - 13 Oct 2016
###a class="FollowButton follow-button profile" data-scribe="component:followbutton" href="https://twitter.com/RyanJones" role="button" title="Follow Ryan Jones on Twitter"### Follow###/a### Ryan Jones @RyanJones When @methode says tokens he's mostly referring to words on the page. #pubcon 12:43 PM - 13 Oct 2016

Check back in soon - Andrew Raynor

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?