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
Hi We have roughly 8500 pages in our website. Google had indexed almost 6000 of them, but now suddenly I see that the pages indexed has gone to 45. Any possible explanations why this might be happening and what can be done for it. Thanks, Priyam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kh-priyam0 -
Is it a good or bad idea (in Google's eyes) to add a forum to my website?
I have an active website with many users adding dozens of comments on the many pages of the site daily. I'm am wondering if it would be good for the overall ranking strength of the site if I were to add a forum to it (in a subdirectory, like forum.mysite.com). On one hand, I can see the forum posts as thin content, which Google wouldn't care for. On the other hand, I see the additional user engagement on the site, which I think Google would like. I know the benefits it can have to the users, but for this question, all I want to know is if this would be seen by Google as a plus or a minus for my site, assuming the forum succeeded in becoming popular. I don't want to do anything that will diminish the value of my site in Google's eyes. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
When migrating website platforms but keeping the domain name how best do we add the new site to google webmaster tools? Best redirect practices?
We are moving from BigCommerce to Shopify but maintaining our domain name and need to make sure that all links redirect to their corresponding links. We understand the nature of 301s and are fine with that, but when it comes to adding the site to google webmaster tools, not losing link juice and the change of address tool we are kind of lost. Any advice would be most welcome. Thank you so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WNL0 -
Question on Moving Content
I just moved my site from a Wordpress hosted site to Squarespace. We have the same domain, however, the content is now located on a different URL (again, same base domain). I'm unable to easily set up 301 redirects for the old content to be mapped to the new content so I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for a workaround. Basically, I want to make sure google knows that Product A's page is now located at this new URL. (www.domain.com/11245 > www.domain.com/product-a). Maybe it's something that I don't have to worry about anymore because the old content is gone? I mean, I have a global redirect set up that no matter what you enter after the base domain, it now goes to the homepage but I just want to make sure I'm not missing something here. Really appreciate your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheBatesMillStore1 -
Switching from Google Plus Local to Google Plus Business
Greetings, We have a website design firm located in India. We wanted to target customers in our city who are looking for website design locally. And with google plus local and a few content marketing would get us into first page very soon because none in the competition is using social signals or even content marketing. BUT unfortunately from last month even though our Google Places is verified we cant verify our Google Local Plus page https://plus.google.com/b/116513400635428782065/ It just shows error 500. Its a bug and its been a year for people without it being addressed. So we are skeptical if our strategy would work without Google+. At the least we decided we would just make company local page and connect it with website. But it might not have effect as local. So we are still unsure which step to take either to wait for google to fix it.(feedbacks emails calls nothing worked) OR We start the process with Google Business Category.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hard0 -
Mobile Sitemap Issue
Hi there, I am having some difficulty with an error on Webmaster Tools. I'm concerned with a possible duplicate content penalty following the launch of my mobile site. I have attempted to update my sitemap to inform Google that a different mobile page exists in addition to the desktop page. I have followed Google's guidelines as outlined here:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DBC01
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34648 I'm having problems with my sitemap.xml file. Webmaster tools is reporting that it is not able to read the file and when I validate it I am getting an error stating that the 'Namespace prefix xhtml on link is not defined'. All I am trying to do is to create a sitemap that uses the rel="alternate" to inform Google that their is a mobile version of that specific page in addition to the desktop version. An instance of the code I am using is below: xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="gss.xsl"?> <urlset< span="">xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84 http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd"> http://www.mydomain/info/detail/ <xhtml:link< span="">rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="http://m.mydomain.com/info/detail.html"/> <lastmod></lastmod>2013-02-01T16:03:48+00:00<changefreq></changefreq>daily0.50</xhtml:link<></urlset<> Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks0 -
Google Phone Numbers
What process is performed to get a company's phone number to show as "A" on google maps. Google displays the phone number for the company on the map as "A" first. It would be beneficial to get that position. Is there a sub-category of seo that does this? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
Link to Google Places, or Google Maps?
On our contact page, we offer a link to view Google Maps for directions. I'm wondering should we be linking to our Google Places page instead, or just stick with the Google Map link? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GravitateMCC0