Mobile First Index Takes Precedence over Google’s Traditional Desktop Index

If ever there was a question of if accelerated mobile pages were worth any time or investment, that question has been more than answered. Adaptation of your website should have already been completed but if it has not, then we suggest you move that to the top of your list in 2019. Google’s mobile-first index has formally been revealed and the notification from the Google Search Console is that some of your websites will be enrolled in the index.

The mobile first index takes precedence over Google’s traditional desktop index and will provide the most accurate results depending on the device used for searched. This again makes it imperative for webmasters to implement a fully responsive strategy that is modified for users on any device – sooner rather than later.

Google has endeavored to easily transition this update for webmasters by fashioning its open source initiative that leverages stripped down HTML files for mobile-friendly copies of webpages known as Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

The decision to implement AMP for your website should appear obvious when allowing for these factors:

  • One of Google’s ranking factors is your webpage speed for mobile and desktop indexes
  • A decrease by as much as 7 percent (Kissmetrics) conversions can be caused by a 1-second delay in web page speed
  • In their mobile first index, AMP is rumored to be a ranking factor (AMP was created by Google)

 

 

A Little History @AMP

AMP tagged pages were created to compete with Facebook’s Instant Articles and only used for news carousel results over mobile devices. Today, AMP results are dispersed throughout organic search results, although you might not notice it as a user. AMP Pages are no longer limited to news carousel results.

Many companies have not given much attention to the AMP project in the past year because Accelerated Mobile Page development has slowed down in some areas over the last three years.

A timeline of important AMP related news over the past few years is as follows:

  • Feb. 24, 2016 – Google launched its Accelerated Mobile Pages project
  • Sept. 20, 2016 – Google incorporates AMP into search results
  • Aug. 21, 2017- AMP Ads complete phase 2 of development
  • Feb. 13, 2018 – AMP Stories are created
  • Dec. 7, 2018 – The Official WordPress Plugin is release

Admittedly, the development of AMP for Ads and landing pages is not fully finished. Fast fetch rendering has helped ads render faster than traditional Ads over Google, and gtag.js implementation connects AMP Ads to events in Analytics and Google Ads.

AMP has turned out to be pretty popular across the world. The AMP results are now used in the Baigu, Sogou and Yahoo Japan. Hundreds of lead publishers from around the globe, including the Times of India and Slate, have adopted AMP to advance their organic search results.

As far as hundreds of lead publishers adopting AMP for all news and blog related content, the number of domains that actually utilize AMP exceeded 31 million early last year.

Answering: Should you adopt AMP?

Pretty much, the future is AMP so why not get ahead of the curve? The rate of adoption has greatly accelerated and will only grow in the future. Consider the 31 million domains mentioned that adopted AMP early last year. That’s increased from less than a million two years ago.

As SEO continues to transfer away from only computer towers and onto mobile screens and other devices, the rate of adoption for AMP and other similar technologies will significantly be on pace to fast-track. It’s certainly up to prevailing platforms to ensure this transition is for the betterment of a technologically advanced and futuristic audiences.

Fair Marketing