Mobile First Index: What Could Happen To Sites w Large Desktop but Small Mobile Sites?

[mirabile]

I have a question about how Mobile First could affect websites with separate (and smaller) mobile vs desktop sites.   Referencing this SE Roundtable article (seorountable dot com /google-mobile-first-index-22953.html), "If you have less content on your mobile version than on your desktop version - Google will probably see the less content mobile version. Google said they are indexing the mobile version first."

But Google/ Gary Illyes are also on the record stating the switch to mobile-first should be minimally disruptive.

Does "Mobile First" mean that they'll consider desktop URLs "second", or will they actually just completely discount the desktop site in lieu of the mobile one?  In other words: will content on your desktop site that does not appear in mobile count in desktop searches?

I can't find clear answer anywhere (see also: /jlh-marketing dot com/mobile-first-unanswered-questions/).

Obviously the writing is on the wall (and has been for years) that responsive is the way to go moving forward - but just looking for any other viewpoints/feedback here since it can be really expensive for some people to upgrade.  I'm basically torn between "okay we gotta upgrade to responsive now" and "well, this may not be as critical as it seems".  Sigh...

Thanks in advance for any feedback and thoughts.  LOL - I selected "there may not be a right answer to this question" when submitting this to the Moz community.

[mirabile]

Update: I just tweeted Gary Illyes about this, and he confirmed that even though Google will index desktop content, desktop versions will be devalued in favor of the mobile version.   So if your mobile version is smaller than desktop, that's a big problem.

[mirabile]

WORD.  I think we're just going to have to see what happens, and in the meantime, be open w clients about all possibilities.  I wish Google could clarify this more, but sounds like they also are still working everything out.

Think about the backlash Google might get if thousands of webmasters with smaller mobile sites suddenly saw traffic plummet bc their desktop content was being devalued in desktop search.

We know that the mobile user experience is suffering because Google mobile SERPs are based on desktop content first.  It makes total sense to try to adapt that to Mobile first - especially since now, more searches are from mobile.

But there should be a way to move to Mobile First without having the desktop experience suffer in consequence.   NEITHER EXPERIENCE should suffer.

Google needs to match the searcher with the best content.  And for many desktop searches - at least in this interim era where many mobile sites are different from desktop sites - the best desktop content may very well be on the desktop site. Not the mobile one.

Really hoping Google figures out a way to work it out.

[dohertyjf]

Hey Mirabile, it's a good question and definitely fun to think about. Honestly, I think it's going to be a bit like "Mobilegeddon" last year which ended up being a whimper at the time, but has set Google up to do this. They've been moving in the mobile direction for quite a long time, and this is a further step.

Unfortunately, we don't yet know how all this is going to work. I think we can be certain that Google doesn't want to make their search results worse by hurting e.g. large companies that deserve to rank simply because they move at glacial speeds (super slow) and don't have a mobile friendly site yet. I think we'll also see that in verticals that have way less mobile traffic (eg very B2B niches) there will be much less of an effect.

If it's anything like Mobilegeddon, we'll only really see the effect a year-ish on as they slowly crank up the dial. Specific questions like which content will be used for ranking, how important internal links become, and all of that can only be answered after the fact.

That said, I'll be watching all of this closely