In a blog post on the Google Webmaster blog on Friday, Google announced they are starting the process of switching the focus of their index from desktop to mobile content. That’s a huge change from a system that has been primarily desktop focused to date and marks a significant transitional step from desktop to mobile as the primary tool to connect with audiences.
What does that mean for you? If you have a responsive website, which we have always advocated for our members, it doesn’t mean a thing since your content should be essentially the same for desktop and mobile. Just make sure you’ve got your mobile version indexed properly in Google Search Console.
If your site was created with a different set of content for desktop and mobile – adaptive design – then you need to get to work switching to a responsive design so you don’t have two sets of data or simply unify on the mobile version (which will probably create a pretty rotten desktop experience).
This move signals the death knell of adaptive design. Having multiple sets of designs has always been questionable in our minds but now that Google is moving forward with mobile-first indexing it will be even more time consuming to make sure the mobile version of your site has the content presented in a way that you want Google to index it for all devices.
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